Fallout: Fury Blood
by WordHuntress
Summary: Part I&II: War looms. Ilya and Danse battle their demons together and explore their bond, but the alliance is rocky in the aftermath of Danse's exile. Ilya and Maxson continue to clash, and without Danse as mediator, the power-play grows more intense as they go to war. The Blood Lands. Bound to a harsh world with savage clan wars, they unearth lost secrets that threaten everything.
1. Back to Reality

_Caution:_ _Explicit language, graphic violence, substance abuse, sexual content, sad bits, and some lols_

* * *

 **Fury Blood**

* * *

 **Part I:**

* * *

Rumbles from beneath, whispers from beyond, power from the sky, fury from the blood. Her world shattered, Ilya Harper battles her demons with Paladin Danse at her side, testing the strength of their bond as personal struggles arise for the both of them.

But now they face a new threat beyond the Commonwealth. A new breed of raiders has formed an uprising, forcing the Minutemen and the Brotherhood of Steel to unite. As the heated power-play between Ilya and Elder Maxson threatens to derail the alliance, so does it threaten relationships and loyalties.

* * *

 **Part II:**

* * *

With war looming, Ilya and Danse battle their demons together, exploring the depths of their bond in their fight to support each other.

But the alliance is threatened in the aftermath of Danse's exile. Ilya and Maxson continue to clash, and without Danse to mediate them, their power-play grows more intense as their forces go to war.

The Blood Lands. They find themselves bound to a world even harsher than the Commonwealth, surrounded by the savage and bloodthirsty in the rivalry of clans, but the unearthing of long lost secrets could shift the balance of power for them all.

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Back to Reality**

* * *

The Commonwealth air hit her face like a slap as the teleportation cast her back without ceremony. Her guts trembled in the aftershock, eyes taking a moment to refocus on reality. She was back _in_ reality, the wastes of mankind's apocalypse, weeping from the skies with radioactive crackles of static.

She tilted her head back and let the rain spit on her face, sighing, hoping that somehow it would rinse her of her turmoil. Distant thunder droned on the wind and reminded her that nothing was peaceful here for long. But at least out here, it was all real; harsh and miserable, but _real._ Down there, the Institute was all just an illusion, a plastic cap one glued over their decayed tooth to pretend the problem wasn't there. Oh, Shaun, her Shaun...

Sucking in a shaky breath, the woman peered around quickly and then consulted her Pip-Boy. She had teleported herself back just outside Diamond City to pick up some supplies, and probably mull over a drink or few. She didn't talk to anyone, or even make eye contact, letting her drenched hair shield her face in a black curtain. People took notice due to her orange Brotherhood uniform, probably all wondering what business she had in the city, but they were easy to ignore due to both the storm in the sky, and in her head.

Eventually, she found herself in the Dugout Inn, murmuring an order of whiskey.

"Ilya Harper! Anything for my long lost Soviet spy!" Vadim Bobrov blared in his accented, hearty way. She only twitched a smile at him. She didn't really think of herself as Russian, despite the origin of her name. Her mother had immigrated, and she had grown up an American. She supposed Vadim was right about her being a spy, though. Working undercover as a triple agent, playing all the angles, except she really had no idea who she was playing anymore.

"Everything alright, friend?" Vadim asked in a more subdued manner as he handed her a bottle.

"Yeah," she droned out. "Fine." Wandering over to a secluded corner, she flopped into a couch and nursed the bottle, dully listening to Travis' newfound voice on the radio, something about raiders gaining a foothold somewhere. Same old.

Once the whiskey had left her company, the warmth of it lingering in her chest couldn't sate her loneliness for long. The Jet weighed heavy in her belt pocket, and without knowing how, she was in the bathroom, inhaling that heavenly dose and staring at the shattered reflection of herself through the mirror. Through the distortion, she couldn't recognise herself, a haggard, withered echo of what she once was. Dark hair limp and without its former lustre. Eyes of deep blue that she once flaunted, now bloodshot and drowned in dark circles. Lips chapped and sore. Nose peeling from sunburn. All on a gaunt face clad in dull, dry skin, but at least that skin had gathered a nice tan from all the days in the sun. Ilya sighed and just sat on the bathroom floor, revelling in the bliss of Jet.

Walking back to Sanctuary from Diamond City with a belly full of whiskey, hauling a backpack full of food, water, and ammunition, was what a certain paladin would call 'tactically irresponsible,' but he could shove it up his ass to accompany that stick. She lost track of how many hours she walked for, boots slipping through mud on multiple occasions, unaided by a drunken spatial awareness that eventually had her twist an ankle, curse loudly in anger, and draw the attention of a pack of feral ghouls.

Once her combat shotgun finished having a private word with them, she figured her paladin was probably right, after all. Ilya limped the rest of the way home with a thumping headache, the green haze of the storm seeming to turn into a blur that threatened to dredge up bile from that whiskey.

"There she is!" Ilya couldn't discern who that was as she realised her feet were stumbling through the centre of Sanctuary.

"Well, well. Look who returns." That was Deacon, she would recognise that dodgy charm anywhere. Looking up, she caught sight of him through the darkness, approaching with an easy smile, sunglasses on even at night. "Need a hand, there?"

But Ilya shook her head, dumped her gear heavily in the street, and headed straight for her shack in a numb daze. The silence around her was deafening as people stared.

"Blue?" Piper called in concern, but Ilya had already shut her door and collapsed on her bed, too tired to cry.

* * *

Dark, damp, dull. It was on days like these that she wondered why she kept it up, pushing through this rotten world with hands that had done horrors and feet that were ever weary. She had forced herself through more than she ever imagined she could, surviving the scum of the dead earth, warring with the warriors of nightmares, enduring the decrepit landscapes of her long lost life, memories now only radioactive remnants. It was all still raw, this future she found herself in, so raw it felt as if the wound would never heal. Maybe it wouldn't, maybe it would only ever grow a deformed, calloused barrier, but a barrier was better than nothing.

Her eyes followed endless raindrops as they pelted the soil outside the shack window. The wooden roof made music with the rain in soft patters, and she let it lull her to another place. Sanctuary Hills before the fallout...

 _Nate was humming to the radio, splayed on the sofa with baby Shaun in his lap. Both of them were just watching the rain outside, savouring the cozy warmth of their home and the aroma of fresh baking. Codsworth was dithering about in his usual manner, making the place immaculate as he accompanied Nate's humming with harmonies of his own. She had quite often caught the two of them humming away together in something of a choir._

 _"_ _Mmm," Nate sniffed the air and leaned his head back over the armrest, looking at her upside-down. "Smells good, Honey."_

 _She would have responded with something fluffy in gratitude, going on about how delicious the recipe was and how much he would love it, pretending she had made it all from scratch and that Codsworth definitely had not smuggled the premade goody box in through the bedroom window while her husband changed Shaun's nappy._

 _She was an ex-soldier, not a cook, and definitely not a typical housewife. Once Shaun came along, she made a go of the domestic lifestyle and settled into it rather well, with Nate bringing home the sugar bombs from his lawyers degree and earning them a comfortable income. Although her military roots always lingered in her background, she was happy, so, so happy, and she wouldn't want to change a single thing._

 _Shaun was making a cooing sound, learning to laugh at his father's silly faces. "Honey, come here, I think that's his first smile!"_

"General?"

Her daydream was cut short by Preston's impeccable timing. Her world fell dark again, and the warmth collapsed like the bubble she had formed around herself. She sat up on her bed and peered over at his intrusion. "I told you not to call me that, remember?" It came out a little more barbed than she had meant it to.

Preston peered down at the wooden planks beneath his boots in a moment of embarrassment. "Sorry, Ilya. I guess I got more used to it than I realised. You know, everyone back at the Castle calls you general. They won't be too happy to have to give it up, that tradition is well set in them."

Ilya sighed and bit the inside of her cheek, giving him an apologetic glance. "I know, but it just isn't me."

"Fair enough, Gen— uh, Ilya. Anyway, I didn't mean to disturb you, I was just checking in. People have scrounged together a big breakfast and set up a nice campfire under the main shack canopy... in your honour, just so you know. Piper's idea..."

He fell silent after she gave only a fleeting smile in response. Piper was a good friend, and the fact that the entire settlement had banded together to do that just for her tugged at the cords deep inside, but when she searched for words, she went blank.

"You don't have to talk about whatever it was you found in the Institute, and I've asked people not to bring it up, but your friends here care about you, Ilya, you've done a lot for all of us. The moment you came back yesterday... I think everyone guessed the news about your son... We just want to help, however we can."

Ilya didn't even bother correcting him about Shaun. Dead, Director of the Institute, for all she knew it was one and the same. It was still all too much to process. Being younger than her son. Shaun. A fully grown man. More than fully grown— _out_ grown. Without her. Even worse, she thought he might be deluded, brainwashed by that sterile and inhuman society down there. He actually believed that what he was doing was right, was the only right. Maybe it was. Hell, she didn't even know what was right and wrong anymore, it was all growing too fuzzy, the lines between good and evil, black and white, all smearing together in a cacophony. It was so loud, and she was just standing in the middle of it all, screaming.

"If there's anything I can do..." Preston spoke quietly in her absence, pulling the door shut to leave, but she stopped him.

"Thanks, Preston. I actually think what I need is a distraction, maybe some good news. You have anything for me?"

He stopped. "Yeah, actually I have an update on that settlement that was being harassed by raiders. Hancock and the team we sent tracked the raiders down and successfully ambushed their hideout. No casualties, and they secured a weapons cache and supplied the settlers with some of the spoils. The settlers agreed to open a trading line with the Minutemen. Another win."

Nodding, Ilya heaved herself from the bed and let her smile grow genuine. "Good. That should keep Hancock off the Jet for a few days. At least until he starts to get stir-crazy again," she added while pulling on a pair of worn leather boots.

Preston shrugged and moved aside to let her through the doorway. "Stir-crazy is putting it mildly. That Ghoul is a bad look for the Minutemen, if you ask me."

"Come on, he's not that bad," Ilya chuckled. "He has his quirks, but he's a good guy."

"I'll still be keeping an eye on him, along with several other tag-alongs that keep following you home."

She gave Preston a sidelong smirk before pulling her leather hood up and stepping outside her shack. Sanctuary was getting on its feet at a more rapid pace since they had set up that recruitment beacon and named it their R&R homebase. All of the collapsed houses had been cleared and the foundations built atop with wooden or metal shacks, and Codsworth had busied himself with cleaning the streets and piling useful materials in one spot for easy access. Defence turrets had been placed at vantage points, and a generous perimeter had been set with guard posts and powered traps. Crops were tended to by settlers and the water purification system was well maintained by their resident mechanic, Sturges.

"I hope this rain lets up soon," Preston complained as they stepped out into it.

The moment her boots hit the concrete foundation beneath her shack, a small, joyous bark, followed by the excitable canine, rushed her and practically leapt up into her arms. Ilya laughed as she attempted to catch Dogmeat, though failing. Still, he jumped up again and placed two dirty paws on her shoulders as she bent to embrace him, applying his hot tongue to her cheek and whining in uncontainable glee.

"Hey, boy!" Ilya greeted, roughing up his fur and pressing her forehead to his. His big brown eyes were so adoring in that moment that she had to suppress a maternal welling in her own eyes. Shaun may have outgrown her, but she still had Dogmeat.

"He missed you like crazy," Piper stated on her approach, obviously not bothered by the rain. "Well, he wasn't the only one, but he whined a lot more than everyone else, and that's saying a lot."

"It's good to see you too, Piper," Ilya smiled. "I'm sorry about my mood last night. I just... really needed to sleep."

Deacon got in before Piper could even open her mouth to respond. "Yeah, you should be, young lady. Stomping off like that without even so much as a hello. Sheesh. Last time I ever stay up all night worrying over you."

Ilya tilted her head at him and leaned on a hip, growing a crooked smile. His lack-lustre tone belied any seriousness he could project. Really, he could be a bad liar when he wanted to be. "So you _did_ miss me."

"Pfft,' Deacon scoffed next, recoiling his head as if revolted by the idea. "No... I only cried a little..."

His childish humour and stoner facade was the pick-me-up she needed, and she would have hugged him, were he not new to the whole friendship thing. Instead, she settled for an amused smile, which she knew made him feel accomplished.

Before long, most of her companions had come outside and crowded around to say their greetings. Only Codsworth broached the subject of Shaun, offering his condolences and seeming quite torn up over it all.

"He's not dead," Ilya finally broke the news, stunning everyone into silence. "It's... it's a long story. But Shaun's alive, and he's okay..." Saying it aloud gave clarity to that fact, and it seemed to breathe a little life back into her. "He's okay..."

"Oh, well that's just wonderful news, mum!" Codsworth beamed, his metal chassis bobbing with exuberance. "I'm so very happy for you. I do hope you will bring young Shaun to visit one day, it would mean the world to me to be able to see him with my own optics again! He must have grown so much from that tiny little bundle of joy that he was."

"He has grown a lot," Ilya mumbled distantly, staring right through Codsworth and back to Shaun's wrinkled face and grey hair.

Sensing that something was off, Piper was swift to change the subject. "We should get out of this rain. Come and get some breakfast, Blue, you must be starving." She beckoned Ilya over to the main shack, where the smell of cooking food made her stomach growl in yearning.

"I'll be there in a sec," Ilya assured, turning to Preston as the others followed Piper back inside. "Hey, uh," she began, rolling around the words in her head. "Did Danse come by here while I was gone, or... leave a message with the Minutemen, maybe?"

Preston's lip jutted in thought for a moment before a frown grew. "No, not that I know of. Why? Wouldn't he just be waiting on the Prydwen for you to report back?"

"Yeah, most likely," Ilya nodded it off with a false cool. But as she fell in behind Preston for the shack, that cool fell down as quickly as she had pulled it up. Maybe he was too busy with the Brotherhood, or maybe he just wasn't that worried about her at all.

* * *

 **A/N:** I switched up the male/female SS history canon, just because I thought it would make more sense for Ilya to be so combat-focused in this fanfic.

-I'm no good at writing short stories, so this will eventually be a long one. Please bear with me, and I hope you enjoy!


	2. Long Days of Steel

**Chapter 2: Long Days of Steel**

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Danse stomped back aboard the Prydwen after another routine patrol, giving the vertibird pilot a thanking gesture of the hand. His power armour whirred and clanked as he moved aside to allow the scribes he had escorted past his bulk. They had performed well during the research expedition, despite their lack of protective armour, and he made a mental note to commend them in his report.

Pulling off his helmet, he breathed in the cold air of the flight deck as it whipped through the catwalks. From up here, one had the perfect view of the Commonwealth below in all its ruined glory. Even bared down to its crumbling skeleton, Boston was still a site to behold and a marvel of pre-war human engineering. If only it counted for something back then other than the satisfaction of a greedy, materialistic society.

Danse was catching himself in these moments of rumination more and more often lately, and it was disconcerting. His mind was liable to wander even on duty, and he didn't have to remind himself of how tactically dangerous and irresponsible that was. Since when did he ever have problems staying focused in the field?

He thought it was ever since Ilya.

The moment she charged into the fight outside the police station, only a 10mm in hand but a crackshot in skill, he was intrigued. But back then, mission focus was his only intent, and he had been quick to seize the opportunity she represented and enlisted her support. The following retrieval from the ArcJet Systems complex had been proof enough of her potential; she was Brotherhood material. From then on, taking her under his wing had not only been a tactical advantage, but a... personal one. Something he was still trying to wrap his head around. He had never encountered such a dauntless yet endearing woman.

And now she was out of his reach, chasing her son's trail to the most dangerous ends of the Commonwealth, and he let her stand on that damn machine and be at the whim of unknown technology without even a word of protest, because it would have been unprofessional. Because it was against decorum. Because he must set an example. Because he was an idiot.

Two days had passed since Ilya disappeared in a spasm of blue, and all he could do to prevent himself wandering the Wastes in search of her was to assign himself to every possible research patrol and maintain his suit like there was no tomorrow.

Frowning, Danse rotated and began to march down the railing for the Prydwen's Command Deck, only to be stopped by a young initiate.

"Paladin Danse, sir," she began in rigid practice, and Danse recognised that enthusiastic display of servitude and pride he had seen in so many young initiates before her. The drive in the young ones was always outstanding to witness. "Elder Maxson wishes to speak with you in his quarters, immediately," the initiate informed.

Thanking and dismissing her, the paladin made his way up to the main deck, silently wondering what could be so urgent. Rapping his armoured knuckles on the bulkhead as lightly as he could manage, he was given curt permission to enter, and was soon face-to-face with Elder Arthur Maxson, the twenty-year-old man who had been destined and conditioned to lead the Brotherhood of Steel since he was a young boy. The younger man gestured for Danse to seal the bulkhead behind him.

"Reporting as ordered, Elder," Danse stated, allowing a leak of curiosity through his voice.

"I see you've been keeping yourself busy, Paladin," Maxson began, strolling loosely across from his desk to greet one of his most trusted officers. "I've had numerous complaints that you've been harassing the younger initiates over minor discrepancies."

That was the last thing Danse was expecting to hear. He had to refrain from blanching. "Discrepancies, sir?"

Maxson came to a halt before him and slowly locked his hands behind his back, face deadpan. "A terminal left on standby, a single tool left out of place, and mismatched socks, to name a few."

For a moment, Danse only stared at his elder, any words stunned out of him. Was this serious? Maybe he had been a little restless over the past few days, and maybe he had snapped a few times at some undeserving subordinates, but did all that really warrant filing complaints against him? He didn't know whether to stay shocked or turn to anger.

"I... uh..." he stammered, quickly taming a frown and shuffling his armour's weight on the spot. "How many complaints, might I ask, sir?"

"None," Maxson was quick to let up. "Of course, I'm just pulling your leg, Danse." The paladin took a second to register the situation and Maxson's dry, stony idea of humour, but then he let out a small huff of amusement. Maxson had caught him completely off guard.

Danse grinned. "Long day, Arthur?"

"Like any other," Maxson sighed. It was only in small pockets of times like these that Maxson relented his harsh demeanour, and then only before the likes of Danse and few others. Danse knew him well enough to know how important making an example of himself for his men and women was to him. If Maxson allowed any cracks to show through, it could shake up the Brotherhood and potentially splinter it all apart. Appointing the right elder after Lyons passed had been a struggling time for them all, and no one was forgetting how fragile it all was any time soon. Maxson carried the responsibility of continuity on his shoulders with unflinching valour. There was no one Danse admired more.

"I will mention that Knight-Captain Cade came to me with concerns over your constant activity as of late, and Proctor Ingram has noticed you using the workshops into the late hours on several occasions. You've always been driven, Danse, but this seems excessive. Off the record, might there be something bothering you?"

Maxson rarely spoke off the record. Danse felt a certain responsibility to tell him the truth, that he had let emotional entanglement conflict with his duty to the Brotherhood. Surely to confide this wouldn't cause a backlash. It was just a little lapse in focus. "To tell you the truth, Arthur," Danse sighed to stall for a moment. On second thought, he realised that in telling of how worried he was of Ilya's status, Maxson may take steps to put distance between the two. He was aware how much of an asset he was to Maxson, and Ilya was no ordinary addition to the Brotherhood, but an advantage against the Institute. He might realise that with the two of them sharing a strong bond, they could have the potential to become more of a liability than an asset to him if the situation ever changed.

Besides, Danse had never had such a friend before, not since Cutler.

"...I've never felt better. If I'm behaving strangely, then it's only because I'm so eager to take the fight to the Institute."

Maxson eyed him for a moment, but he seemed to be convinced as he nodded approvingly. "You've been in the field so long during recon, it will probably take some time to get used to the sense of safety aboard the Prydwen. In any event, Knight Harper's eventual return will speed things back up for you. No doubt you'll be looking forward to the reunion."

Danse nodded firmly to his elder's close inspection. "Absolutely. Any intel she brings back will be invaluable to our campaign here, along with Doctor Li's assistance."

"Now, I didn't call you in here just for the camaraderie," Elder Maxson went on, slipping back into his authority. "What I have for you may keep you tied over until then, if in fact my intuition is correct here." Danse's ears perked up as he watched Maxson pace over to his desk. "I've been getting increasing reports of raider activity stepping it up a notch across the Commonwealth, but more specifically outside our intended hotzone. Now usually we wouldn't pay much mind to these disorganised scum, but recent reports have me concerned." He picked up a folder from the desktop and moved to hand it to Danse. "All of the accumulated intel is in there, including a detailed lay of the region."

Danse skimmed over the map quickly before giving his attention back to Maxson. "What's the significance of their activity in relation to our mission, sir?"

"Nothing, other than the risk of our power in the Commonwealth, Paladin. If these raiders have the capability to rally and influence numerous other raider groups in this region, then we could have a widespread rebellion on our hands, and one with an edge. Scouts have traced the origin of their activity back to the exact region where we have records of a 'Vault Prototype: 1D.' Now the records we have of this vault were vague, merely a mentioning and a designated location of interest for construction, but we know that if it does exist, it can explain anomalies reports have mentioned of these raider advances."

"Anomalies..." Danse didn't like the sound of that.

"Such as an unidentified specimen outbreak. These creatures were observed being 'swapped' across from one raider to another, latching themselves to the nape of the neck and inducing convulsions and eventual incapacitation in their hosts. Upon awakening, each observed raider seemed to display superior strength, endurance, and agility. Whether the origin of these specimens was a mutation or the result of Vault-Tec experimentation is unknown, but they cannot be allowed to spread further. So far, any other enhancements or side effects are yet to be confirmed, which is where you come in, Paladin Danse."

From the lingering expression of disgust on Maxson's face, Danse knew that these creatures were in utmost need of eradication. "Ready, Elder," he declared with hardened vigour.

"Good," Maxson obviously expected nothing less. "I want you to capture one of these infected raiders, and bring them back to the base site we've set up for examination, which will be marked in that folder. We can't risk a contagion at the airport or aboard the Prydwen. If you could secure a host with a specimen still attached, that would be preferential, but if not, just the host will suffice. You may leave via vertibird first thing in the morning. Lancer-Captain Kells will go over mission details in more depth before departure. Any questions?"

"None, sir. Consider it done."

"Very well. Ad victoriam, brother."

"Ad victoriam."

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks for reading! I was going to hold off on uploading ch2 and space them out, but Christmas Eve gift for the early followers :) I hope I did both Danse and Maxson justice. Had a lot of fun writing the two.


	3. Raider Troubles

**Chapter 3: Raider Troubles**

* * *

"Ok, I'm calling it. Why the long face?"

Ilya was startled out of her thoughts by Deacon's words, craning her neck up from the cooking pot to look at him. Although his sunglasses veiled his eyes, she knew his stare bore through her, and he was serious. Something seldom witnessed.

Despite it, she threw it back at him. "Could be your surgeon screwed up your mug. Or maybe you've just swapped your face so much that it's all starting to melt down."

"Firstly, I haven't gone under the knife for a few months, now," Deacon countered, stepping down from his sentry point on a boulder and picking his way to her. "Secondly, that actually hurt my feelings. And thirdly, no playing, I'm being serious." He squatted down on his haunches next to the campfire, propping his rifle on the ground to balance on it. "When you asked me to tag along, I wasn't expecting to have to chase you 24/7 at full speed across the Commonwealth. This may come as a shock, but I'm not as fit as I used to be, and definitely not as reckless, either. But you! You might have to take the cake on that one. You could probably do with eating it, too..."

Ilya cast him a glare beneath heavy brows for that. He wasn't the first to mention her drop in weight. She was always on the move, and finding the time to eat these days was the least of her worries.

"And no, chems are _not_ a good substitute for food," Deacon seemed to read her mind before it got there. Her glare turned to fire. Had he been snooping through her pack? "Oh, I've noticed you taking samples when you think I'm not looking. I work as a spy, remember?"

Ilya pouted and cursed under her breath, that fire now turning inward. She should have known he would pick up on it. "It's just to get me through until things settle down. There's too much to do out here."

"I'm sure Hancock and Cait would be dancing circles right now, but I'm not. Where's the original Ilya? You know, the one that fixed people's problems, not turned into a problem herself."

She stabbed the mutt chops in the pot with her combat knife. "So, I'm a problem, am I?"

Deacon didn't hesitate. "Yeah, you are. I'm not exactly ecstatic to have a moping mess watching my back one minute, then a raging raider leaving me in her dust the next." Maybe she should have accepted Piper's offer to talk, after all. Deacon obviously didn't understand the concept of empathy. He drew her eye as he gave a long sigh. "I understand if you don't wanna talk about whatever is inside your head, but don't expect me to sit twiddling my thumbs while you turn yourself into a vegetable. I told you all my shit, and yeah, my previous life wasn't quite as glamorous as yours, but it was still a slap in the face to lose it all in the blink of an eye. So anytime you wanna let me in there," he tapped a finger on her head, "feel free. Besides, if we're gonna be partners, you need to get cleaned up and start taking care of yourself, or you won't be doing anyone any good for much longer, me included."

Ilya followed his every word with her fire waning, as if each syllable he uttered ate away at the fuel. Deep down, she knew he was right. She was killing herself like this, relying on the chems, barely sleeping, and when she did, the nightmares raided any attempts. Little Shaun being ripped from Nate's hands, the shouting, the panic and helplessness, then the gunshot, that dreadful sound, and Nate just limp, empty, gone. God, she missed him so much, it still hurt like the day she lost him. If only Kellogg didn't pull the trigger, why did he have to? He could have overpowered Nate easily fresh out of cryo. The fucking bastard. Every single day, she savoured the memory of killing that piece of shit, of her knife ripping through his gut, wrenching it up with that satisfying squelch and pathetic wince on his breath.

"Hey, look, I didn't mean to upset you or anything..."

Ilya looked back to Deacon's creased face, suddenly aware of the moisture in her eyes and the white-knuckled grip on her knife in the cooking meat. She let it go and blinked back the tears. "No," she swallowed. "No, you're right, Deacon. I'm a mess. I need to pull myself together."

He seemed to be relieved, exhaling. "Honestly, I was expecting you to stick me with that knife. Glad you still like me enough not to."

"I wouldn't go that far," she sniped with sarcasm.

"Oh, good. Well, I'll just be over there," Deacon backed away to his sentry point with false fear, flattening himself atop the rocks with his rifle set to scan. "And let me know when your feast is ready, all this running's made me starving."

* * *

In the afternoon, they set off again for The Slog, the Ghoul farm that had called for aid against frequent raider attacks. It was nightfall by the time they reached it, and even through the encroaching dark, the area seemed deserted on approach. No one was at the guard posts, no lights or fires flickered, and it was dead quiet.

Ilya drew her sidearm and quietly crept past the pool toward the main building, while Deacon checked out the small shed off to the side. Peeking around the entrance, she couldn't spot any movement or hear any signs of life, just upturned furniture and obvious signs of a struggle. No blood, though. Strange. It set her heart into a sluggish pump. Had they been too late? The raiders must have been successful in their last attack and killed or taken everyone here. But the place didn't have the usual symptoms of raiders. Not much had been taken, from what she could tell outside. The crops still looked intact, and nothing was aflame or destroyed.

She carefully moved inside, briefly sweeping the first area, then moving on to the room at her left, where the residents had beds set up. She only found a few scattered pipe pistols. So they had been disarmed, or surrendered.

"Anyone in here?" she called in a near whisper.

In answer, she heard a soft scuffle from behind, then a flash of motion almost escaped her eye as it darted through the room and out the entrance.

"Hey, wait!" Ilya called, racing after the movement to discern it as a woman. She spotted Deacon coming out of the shed. "Catch her!"

He burst into speed, and being only a few paces behind the woman, caught her with ease and held her struggling at bay. "It's okay, lady! We're the good guys," he tried as she wrestled with his grip, screaming and set to bite at his arm.

Ilya dashed toward them, slotting her sidearm back in its holster and holding her hands up to calm the woman. "Deirdre? It's me." The Ghoul woman slowly calmed and looked to Ilya with wide, black eyes. "We're here to help. What happened?"

As soon as Deacon released her, she fell to tears, covering her face with violently quaking hands. "The raiders came and took everyone," she wailed, on the verge of crumbling to her knees. "They—they set some kind of creatures loose on them all, and then they carried them away. I didn't see if they were still alive, I was too scared to move. But I heard one of the raiders talking about using them for a job. So they must have been alive, right?"

"Slow down," Ilya soothed on approach, placing a hand to her shoulder. "How about we sit down, get you something to eat, then you can tell us everything."

Deirdre seemed to take that in and gathered her breath, nodding. They went back inside and sat on the beds, and Ilya rummaged through her pack to find some food, handing over some cram with a bottle of purified water. The woman was not so inclined to eat, however, but she did guzzle down the water within seconds.

"Whenever you're ready," Ilya prompted gently.

Deirdre told of a scene that crashed into chaos within seconds, gunfire splitting the air from all directions and people running for their lives. She said that it wasn't until she made it inside that she realised no one had been shot, and that bullets weren't even flying in their direction. The raiders were only firing to spook them.

"Doesn't sound like raiders, to me," Deacon commented.

"But they were, at least they looked like they were," Deirdre sniffed, hands kneading into each other. "They were the same ones that kept coming around and taking pot-shots at us. Like they were testing our reactions."

Ilya frowned in thought. Deacon was right, it didn't sound like traditional raider tactics, and it made no sense why they didn't pillage the place. Had they taken hostages in hopes of demanding a ransom from the Minutemen? "Tell me about the creatures you mentioned," she moved on.

Deirdre shivered. "I didn't see much before I hid, but I saw them lunging at people. Everyone would just fall down and start flailing, like they were being electrocuted. When they stopped, the raiders carried them away."

"What did the creatures look like?" Ilya pressed, gambling that the Ghoul wouldn't break down from trauma.

"They were small, smaller than bloatflies, and were green, like Super Mutants. They looked like snakes but with insect legs. Please," Deirdre's ragged features turned back to desperation, "you have to get them back!"

"We'll get them back," Ilya assured, but she knew she couldn't make promises. The creatures sounded like a standard radioactive mutation, but it was odd that she had never encountered such things yet. Even Deacon looked surprised, and she considered him pretty well travelled. Had the raiders found them in some unknown environment and somehow trained them? Something was off.

After draining Deirdre of all her knowledge, Deacon offered to escort her to the Minutemen Castle, while Ilya stayed at The Slog in an attempt to follow the raider's tracks. She wasn't so adept in that skill, yet—Danse still had a lot to teach her; she hadn't learned to track back in her days in the U.S army, there was no need—and she had to backtrack several times after losing the trail. After creeping along the tracks, keeping out of trouble, she stopped when she realised how close she was getting to the raider-infested Dunwich Borers quarry. She would need backup if she wanted to raze this shithole, preferably in the form of Brotherhood firepower, especially if they had these subduing creatures at their beck and call.

"Fucking raiders," Ilya muttered to herself as she stalked in for a closer look, keeping low behind the outlying boulders. Immediately, she noticed the difference since the last time she had scoped the place out. Their numbers had increased significantly, and their defences had been upgraded. More lookouts were posted in the two small buildings on either side of the quarry heights, accompanied by attack dogs, and even more patrols walked the winding paths leading down to the chasm. Twice the amount of turrets were propped at vantage points, and two raiders were clad in modified power armour.

She peered down on them with narrow eyes, trying to get a clearer look. With raiders, it was hard to tell, but one of them seemed female, her hair styled with a mohawk and shaved sides that reminded her of Maxson. The other was clearly male, as he was currently shouting profanities to his minions. Ilya then eyed the cage at the bottom of the chasm, where a firepit raged beneath and sent up columns of black smoke. They must have put people in there and burned them alive.

"Fucking raiders," she repeated before falling back.

Trekking back for Sanctuary, Ilya pondered on her next course of action with the intel she thieved from the Institute network; she seemed to do her best thinking while walking. Handing the holotape over would surely cement her betrayal of Shaun, at least to herself, but would gain her the favour of the Brotherhood of Steel, favour that she would need if she wanted their help here. In her mind, both the Institute and the Brotherhood had flawed visions and corruption, yet good intentions for the future of mankind. With the Brotherhood, it was order by force, and humanity above all. With the Institute, it was order by experimental, unethical science, and safety in isolation. The Brotherhood aimed to gain rule and safeguard technology from expanding to dangerous limits by keeping it for themselves, while the Institute aimed to shape the future in their own quarantined society and let the rest of the world rot. They were on complete opposite ends of the spectrum, and she still couldn't decide which one was the lesser evil.

But there were good people in each. People like Danse, who devoted his entire life to serving for what he believed was the greater good and threw himself into often impossible odds to save one civilian. People like that were hard to come by in this new world, and she realised that in his absence, it was all a lot more overpowering to her... and more lonely.

Beneath that strict bravado, she suspected that he might see more to her than just a crackshot and a key to the Institute. After all, he had taken a huge risk on her by taking her under his wing so suddenly, and she never had found out why he had taken such a shining to her. Since then, he had opened up to her piece by piece, and eventually confessed that he saw a friend in her, and that he was afraid of losing that bond again, like he had lost his only true friend, Cutler. Hearing him push out those words, despite the struggle it took him to do it, made a place in her damaged heart soften just for him.

But maybe, just maybe, she was even more than that to him. The thought made something come alive within her, a childish excitement tinted with desire, but she doused it quickly. Men like Danse were difficult to read, and she could be way off target. It hit her, right then, that he had come to barrier that void inside her. Maybe not fill it, she didn't think anything could repair her, not since losing Nate, but it was something.

Then thoughts of her son flooded back in, and they weren't warm like her previous thoughts, but cold, like the halls of the Institute. Did the origin of his vision flow in her blood? Did she carry the spawn of his insight, influencing him even as an infant with some event in her previous life or thoughts she conjured while he slumbered in her womb? Was it all her fault? Or maybe Nate's? Had the torment of being ripped from his father's arms and being witness to his death, even so young, somehow altered his mental state?

Ilya had to stop walking to keep up with her racing mind. No. The Institute had committed the unforgivable crime of taking Shaun in the first place. They were inhumane before he rose to the top of their ranks. It was the Institute itself that had corrupted her Shaun. But maybe, just maybe, she could make him see reason. Maybe she could be the mother he always needed.

* * *

Sanctuary greeted her with the usual—Dogmeat's yips and excitable licks, Piper's charismatic smile, Nick's fatherly concern, Preston's queries and updates, and the smell of cooking food. After filling Preston in on her discovery at The Slog, she ventured off after some company and food.

Hancock was there this time, lounging around the makeshift bar they had built up in one of the shacks, boasting to Cait of an epic tale involving ragdoll raider corpses and plenty of fiery explosions. Ilya settled in with a plateful of fresh food and indulged him, playing along with his rendition with wide, fascinated eyes and impressed smiles, compared to Cait's calling out on his bullshit. The noise drew in MacCready, which inevitably got him involved, and started off a whole new charade of storytellings, all of which Ilya suspected were either outright untrue or wildly exaggerated. It was all in good humour, the two Goodneighbour boys were like peas in a pod, so she left Cait to deal with them and retired to her shack with a beer to soothe her swollen mind, and lull her to sleep.

* * *

"Ilya!"

Her limbs thrashed upon the bed, pulled out of one of those horrid falling dreams. Her head spun and her tongue refused to co-operate with reality, slurring out nonsense. "Hmm? Wha? Where?" Her hands were reaching out for something, patting across the mattress in their search.

"Here," the invader came closer and put something cold and weighty in her hand. She blinked to clear the fog, seeing her 10mm handgun. Still dazed, she clutched it with intent and aimed it up at the helpful invader, who turned into Deacon. His hands rose, and his face grew questioning.

'Wait... that wasn't right," he muttered more to himself.

Ilya blinked again, harder, then shook her head and lowered the gun. "Sorry." She rubbed at her eyes, trying to push away the remnants of falling from the Prydwen and splattering face first on Maxson's slicked-back mohawk. "What's up?"

Deacon resumed his casual stance, slipping his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Well, I'm back. That's really all that's up."

Groaning at his imprudence, Ilya rolled over and flopped back on her stomach, seeking that blissful drift once more. But Deacon had other ideas.

"Oh no you don't." He wrestled the sheets from her grip until they came flying off. "Come on, the sun is out, the people are smiling, and you can almost pretend the world isn't a butthole." He was pulling at one of her legs, dragging her from the mattress while she muffled her grumblings into her pillow.

"Fine!" she eventually gave in, clawing her way out from beneath her pillow. "But you're making me breakfast."

"Yes, boss," Deacon beamed with a proud chuckle, giving a fake, girly scream out the door as she threw her pillow his way. As she lay back one more time before hauling herself up, she couldn't keep the smile from unfurling. Maybe Deacon helped barrier that void, too. Everyone here added a piece to that barrier.

Once she had thrown some hooded rags on, the yellow sweater doing its part in boosting her morning mood, Ilya stumbled out of her shack and prepared herself to be leaped upon by Dogmeat. He lavished his affections onto her as usual, and she roughed up his fur as usual, too, and again, she was reminded that she still had reasons to get out of bed every morning. Maybe she would take Dogmeat out with her today, he was probably in need of a good run.

"Good morning, Miss Ilya!" Codsworth greeted, floating over seemingly out of nowhere. "I believe Mr. Garvey would like a moment of your time." That was the usual way of it. The robot butler was always hovering near the largest group of gatherers, eager to serve. Everyone quickly took to looking for him to deliver their messages across the settlement.

With Dogmeat panting behind her, Ilya found Preston out by the entrance to the settlement, stirring something in the pot at the cooking station.

"Hey," she greeted blandly.

"Gen—damn it. Ilya, I've spoken with the Minutemen over at The Castle about Dunwich Borers. They want to help, but the situation over there might just be too heavy for us, at least right now. We're still establishing ourselves, and mounting a full assault on a heavily defended raider outpost wouldn't exactly be wise. I know I said I didn't want another repeat of Quincy, but we can't just throw ourselves into every situation we come across. Maybe we ought to negotiate this time, at least see what they want for the hostages."

Ilya crossed her arms and stared at the ground in thought. "Have they made contact for negotiation?"

"Not yet, but—"

"Then they're not going to," she cut in firmly. "Preston, you should know better than I do that raiders don't mess around. They're up to something, and it's more than just guerrilla tactics and ransoms. Deirdre said she overheard one of them talking about using the Ghouls for some kind of job they needed done, right? We're not getting those people out of there unless we storm the place and kill every last one of those fuckers."

Preston seemed taken aback for a moment, then he eventually nodded. "I know. You're right. For a minute there, I forgot how compelling you can be when you want to be heard."

She returned his smile. "I know I don't talk a lot, but it doesn't mean I don't think a lot."

"Too true," Preston agreed. "Okay, you've won me over. But I still don't think the Minutemen will be enough to go in there."

Ilya looked across the skyline for the blip amongst the blue, dreading what it meant for her to go there. "That's where the Brotherhood comes in."

* * *

 **A/N:** I apologize if the writing was boring or bad quality, I was a little low on inspiration. Action is coming soon.


	4. Rad Land

**Chapter 4: Rad Land**

* * *

Setting off the vertibird signal smoke well away from Sanctuary prevented the Brotherhood from marking the place as her homebase, which sat well with her. She didn't want them arriving in squadrons of vertibirds in the middle of the night to drag her off because Cade wanted to check her blood pressure.

Ilya shaded her eyes from the sun as she looked skyward and waited for a pickup, Dogmeat sitting happily at her side. She had packed lightly, bringing only her most favoured weapons, her armour pieces, and a bottle of water with stims and Jet for good luck. What Deacon didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

She waved the pilot in as the vertibird appeared within minutes, waiting for it to touchdown before she climbed aboard and took charge of the minigun on its flank. Dogmeat hopped up and seemed to know that sitting on the passenger seats was the second best place to be.

"Glad to see you safely back from the Institute, ma'am," the pilot relayed through the microphone system, her voice ripe with relief. "Elder Maxson will be eager to hear what you've learned."

This was it, Ilya thought as the vertibird gained lift. She had reached the point of no return, and handing in the holotape meant backstabbing her own son. She ground her jaw throughout the entire flight to the Prydwen, and by the time the docking sequence was complete, her jaw was mildly throbbing, and she turned instead to clenching her fists repeatedly.

Lancer-Captain Kells was waiting on the Flight Deck for an initial word before she reported to Maxson. He wore his usual sour face, and Ilya braced herself to nod and apply _yes, sir_ to every single sentence. That was the first thing they taught in boot camp back in her day. How to be a good drone.

"Knight Harper," Kells addressed once she reached a certain point on the railings. "It's good to see you returned to us unscathed. I'm sure you have a lot to tell, but first I have to have you searched before you can present your findings to the elder. Necessary precautions, I hope you understand."

Ilya suppressed a sigh and nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Oh, and I'm afraid your dog will have to remain outside. Scribe Neriah was lucky enough to be allowed her molerats aboard, but a free roaming canine is out of the question."

Looking down at Dogmeat, Ilya gave him a penitent pat. "Stay out here, boy. I won't be long. And don't bite anyone."

Dogmeat cocked his head, seeming to absorb that, then he whined softly and lowered his tail between his legs, sulking.

* * *

After the pleasantries were out of the way, Kells led her into the Command Deck without a word. She scanned the area for any sign of Danse, but he was nowhere in sight. Her heart dropped with disappointment, and she knew the next task was going to be a notch harder without his reassuring presence by her side.

Maxson stood with his back to her, hands resting at the small of his back, regarding the Commonwealth outside with a stern air.

Maybe it was the sound of her incoming gait, or the stench of the Wastes she carried, or he had merely been forewarned of her approach, but he knew it was her. "Welcome back, Knight Harper. I admit I had my concerns having made contact with Dr. Li but not yet with you." His voice belied any truth to that claim of concern, but he did present her with an inkling of a smile as he turned to acknowledge her, which seemed out of place amongst his forlorn features. "I presume the Institute had a great deal of things to discuss with you, rather than showing you hostility, as you're clearly still in one piece. I'm curious to know how they handled the situation."

Ilya pushed back her hood and pulled off the grey knit cap she had worn underneath, combing back her ratty hair with a rough swipe. She had prepared for this moment throughout most of the airlift. Revealing the Institute's director as her son would no doubt backfire and highlight her as a security risk. She had no choice but to play Maxson like a harp, not that she took pleasure from it. "They knew who I was, and that I was there for my son. They were impressed by how determined I was to find him, but more than that, I think they pitied me." That last part was true, she thought. "So they took me on a tour, of sorts. Practically welcomed me with open arms and proposed I join them."

His brow canted high. "Really? I find that... suspicious."

Ilya kept her cool. "Believe me, so did I, but it turns out they needed an agent on the outside to replace Kellogg. I already knew too much, so it was either they killed me, or won me over."

"And I'm guessing you accepted their offer?" Maxson was eager to know.

"Yes, Elder," Ilya replied, only now realising that she had forgotten the proper formalities. He didn't seem to mind, however. "I thought it the best course of action in order to keep an eye on their activities and report back to you."

The man seemed pleased to hear that, as he straightened his already rigid stance. "Excellent work, Knight. I'm impressed by the outcome of this. I wasn't expecting much more than a reconnaissance, but you managed not only to recruit Dr. Li and avoid hostile engagement, but insert yourself right within the Institute ranks, and out again. I assume you also managed to procure that intel we needed."

Willing the quiver in her hands to still, Ilya turned over the holotape, blocking the pang that went with it. "Yes, sir."

"Good. I'll get this to Proctor Quinlan straight away," Maxson praised as he turned the object over in his hand as if he could decode its contents himself. His dark features then lifted back to her as if nothing about this pleased him at all. "I expect a full report by tomorrow morning, and you'll have that entire day for some downtime, unless you're eager for your next assignment?"

"Depends on the assignment, sir," Ilya responded, an impish grin automatically working itself on her lips. Maxson's face didn't so much as twitch in amusement, however, and she quickly schooled her features, taking note for the future to never do that again. "May I ask if I'll still be assigned under Paladin Danse, sir?" she dared to query.

Maxson gave a knowing nod. "You two have proven to be quite the pair, possibly my most effective. Separating you would be counterproductive. Unfortunately, however, Paladin Danse is away on his own assignment right now, and won't be expected back for at least a day or two. Which brings me to your next assignment, should you wish to assist him."

Of course, Ilya was more than curious to know what Danse was up to, and her gut yearned to agree, but the main reason she had come up here was stomping down her selfish wants and needs. Those raiders would only establish themselves deeper in the region the longer she waited to act, and the settlers needed to be pulled out as soon as possible. Besides, Danse could handle himself.

"Actually, Elder," Ilya began, almost hesitantly. How to put this into words. "I have... a request." By the raised brows on Maxson's face, Ilya knew request hadn't been the right word to use. Nonetheless, she powered through. "A favour to ask. And I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important, or if I thought I hadn't earned it."

For an uncomfortable few seconds, Maxson only eyed her, calculating and cold. When he spoke, it was with a tangible note of irritation. "Danse said you were bold, on several accounts. Now I've seen it for myself, and I'm not sure I like it." A warning prickled her skin that she had pushed him too far, but she refused to waver under his eye. That tenacity had gotten her through the Glowing Sea and back.

"But I'm inclined to agree that after risking your life entering the Institute, the Brotherhood of Steel does owe you a favour, but that all depends on how much of a favour." She watched him, a certain weight lifting the slack from her shoulders, as he relented his glare and softened, somewhat. "Go ahead, Harper."

Enlivened, but careful to keep a cautious approach, Ilya updated what intel Maxson already had on the Minutemen, but neglected to mention her status with them, other than being an active member. Giving him more reason to question her allegiance would only wound her chances of a possible alliance between the two factions, plus, having him think her just an agent negotiating to save civilians of the Commonwealth out of the goodness of her heart made her look innocent. Upon explaining the rising situation with the raiders and the hostages, Maxson began to nod briskly to her words before he interrupted her.

"We're quite aware of the situation. In fact, it's the reason for Danse's assignment. Assuming he can capture and bring back one of these specimens, we'll know a lot more about them very shortly. Then, we can make a move on driving them out of the region."

"Capture, sir?" Ilya echoed, trying but failing to stop the concern from showing. "Was he briefed on how dangerous these things could be?"

Maxson's gaze sharpened with chagrin. "You think we would send one of our best out there blind and unprepared, Knight? I know you haven't been with us long, but don't be so quick to underestimate our proficiency."

 _Why shouldn't I underestimate you?_ Ilya thought. _You missed the part where I lead the Minutemen._

"Danse was given the best intel and equipment available to him, along with a fully capable squad, and air support should his situation change. I'd have thought you would know by now how capable he is," Maxson added.

Her nerve endings cringed at the thought of things going tits up out there, but she managed to block any further gnarly images and kept focus on dealing with Maxson, who was currently burning a hole through her skull.

"Sorry, Elder," she forced out. "I don't doubt him at all, I've just been hearing a lot of bad things out there. But if Danse's mission will make things easier moving forward, then I'm mission ready. What have you got for me, sir?"

Looking a little suspicious, Maxson could only sigh quietly and gesture for her to fall into step beside him. "This won't be critical to mission success, but having a reinforced fallback point for Danse and his team would be an extra safeguard in case of unexpected retaliation. If these raiders are even more organised than our intel suggests, then pulling out with one of their people could spark..."

Ilya watched as Maxson seemed to be lost for the right choice of words. "A chase, sir?"

He cast a look before ascending the ladder for the main deck. "A chase," he repeated, satisfied. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

He led Ilya through the Prydwen's halls, explaining much of the same details he had given Danse, along with updating her Pip-Boy map to compensate for the added region. "Scribes have dubbed the region 'Rad Land.' Of course, I thought it was absolutely ridiculous, but they insisted it would remind the soldiers of its dangers, and that the name was... catchy. I regret letting it slide."

Ilya smothered her smirk. The man was far too serious for his own good, and she had to remind herself that he was ten years her junior. Glancing at his profile as he walked beside her, she came to wonder what he had endured throughout his life to get to where he was now, with the visage of someone twice his age.

Eventually, after scaring half the crew with his presence alone, Maxson stopped at the armoury and addressed Proctor Teagan, who also looked stunned to see the elder. "That prototype I had you working on, Proctor Teagan? I think it's time for a field test."

Ilya took a few steps in behind Maxson, blood hastening through her veins at the possibilities of the next few moments. She watched as Teagan looked from Maxson to her with wide eyes that quickly burned with pride, before he bent to access something below his bench.

Maxson regarded her from over his shoulder. "I hope you're efficient with long-range munitions. This assignment will be ideal for field testing this prototype I had a hand in designing."

Having never received training in sniper detail throughout her military career, Ilya of course replied, "Yes, sir. Even Danse is jealous of my long-range tally, which is probably why he's never mentioned my expertise to you."

That made Maxson turn slightly with a half grin. "That so? I'll have to chase him up on that, then."

Ilya bit her lip and gawked as Teagan heaved up the magnificent specimen and placed it on the bench before them. She immediately identified it in the genre of gauss rifles, but more streamlined, and higher tech. Its material reflected the surrounding light with a high polish, and it was adorned with a night-vision recon scope of high powered magnification, but the barrel wasn't as long as she would have expected for a sniper rifle. Another curious thing was some sort of extension protruding from the stock.

Teagan noticed her frown. "What you have here is a thrice powered, finely calibrated 'gauss-sniper' of extreme proportions. Its parallel electromagnetic conductors are boosted in charge due to the upgraded capacitor coils, giving the kinetic release one mighty heck of a kick. And fitted with this magnetic harness from the stock, it's capable of integrating with your suit's systems for targeting assistance and ease of access."

Ilya was still taking in the sheer size of the thing. "Wait, what? This thing looks about as heavy as a Fatman."

"I'll take it from here, thank you, Teagan," Maxson cut in, grasping the beast to present it to Ilya. "This is designed as a power armour shoulder-mounted sniper unit. It can be utilised as both a combat sniper for closer range, or deep range." As he said that, he flicked something on and the barrel folded out to extend to twice its length. His gaze never left Ilya, and as a slow smile spread on her face, so did his. "I'll show you. Where's your armour?"

"Over here." Ilya waved him over to her personal suit of armour as it hung lifeless by its station. She folded her arms and watched intently as Maxson went about attaching the sniper unit to her armour's right shoulder and setting up its automated systems. Most of the scribes in the maintenance bay were crowding behind her or inconspicuously watching while pretending to be on duty.

Once he was satisfied, Maxson stood and gave his design the once over, clearly having relished the chance to get his hands dirty for a change. Beneath that mask of austerity, Ilya realised he was just like any other of the boys with their toys. "I hope it serves you well, Knight," he eventually spoke, though he spared her no glance. She wondered if he would prefer to test it for himself, or if he simply longed to be out in the field again, free of all his responsibilities here.

Ilya was starting to see why Danse had so much respect for the elder. Part of the reason why she refused to be labelled as the general of the Minutemen was because she didn't want to be tied down by the title. Maxson hadn't allowed the same selfishness to prevent him from doing his duty. She actually pitied him a little, too.

"I'm sure it will, Elder," she smiled, genuinely, before opening her power armour up and climbing within—a well practised manoeuvre. "I'll tell you all about it when we get back." But before she could stomp her way out of the bay, she was stopped.

"Harper," Maxson called, and when she twisted, he was approaching, probably to get out of earshot from the others. He lowered his voice once he was near, and a faint tone of compassion escaped. "You never did say whether you found your son."

Ilya pondered for words for a moment, surprised that he would even care to ask. "He's dead." As Maxson nodded his condolences and took his leave, she wondered if that had been the right decision.

* * *

Dogmeat's ears flapped in the wind as the vertibird motored across the Commonwealth skies. Ilya admired the look of utter wonder in his young eyes, the way he saw the world so simply and with never-ending enthusiasm, tongue lolling out one side. She wished she could be the same. The pull of bliss brought her thoughts to the Jet, waiting in her pocket for its chance. She squashed the thought; she would need to exit her armour to get to her pocket, anyway.

To keep her mind off the chems, she allowed it to wander to Danse. Those eyes, brown and warm, and surprisingly emotive, but shadowed by depths even he couldn't understand. The creases that so often formed on his forehead. His lips... and that _voice_... Ilya's skin flushed with gooseflesh beneath her armour, and when she remembered what it felt like when he would stand close, too close, somehow unaware of what it did to her body, her lips parted to sigh out a heated breath. Or maybe he _was_ aware...

The murk of the Glowing Sea was suddenly swamping her, bringing with it a tang to the air and revving up her suit's Geiger counter. Dogmeat just cocked his head at the crackle. Luckily, dogs were immune to the effects of radiation.

"It's okay, boy," Ilya reassured, trying to quell the pace of her heart and pull herself back to the present. "Just a little treble to get the party started."

Dogmeat gave a playful bark in reply.

Thunder and lightning soon joined in with the radiation, spurring each other into a recreation of hell itself. Ilya sighted many hellspawns below as they soared overhead, from radscorpions to deathclaws, but stayed her hand from opening fire. No need to waste the ammo.

"Rad Land," the pilot announced over the comms after roughly an hour of flight. Ilya sat up from her slouch and clutched the overhead handle to lean out the side. The distinction between the two lands was clear, where ahead, the green haze was broken by a red menace of air. On closer approach, she realised why. Old pre-war oil wells in the land had been dredged up from deep in the earth's crust and set fire to, spewing black smoke at the heights of towers in the Commonwealth. She had seen such things in wars of the old world, in the middle east and elsewhere. In her timeline, almost everything was powered by nuclear energy, eliminating most needs for oil.

"The storms set fire to the oil wells," the pilot explained. "This area was a hotspot for nuclear detonations, and the radiation levels here skyrocket and cause severe storm systems. But the fires don't last. Someone keeps putting them out."

The pilot's last sentence was suggestive, Ilya knew. That 'someone' had to be these raiders. They must have a shitload of manpower to be able to douse the fires. Or, failing that, a Prydwen-sized extinguisher.

"The fallback point is just ahead, I'll set her down and then hightail it. If they haven't needed the air support, then there should still be a vertibird at the LZ. It'll get you back home. If you lose that, well, then you're on your own," the pilot shouted.

"Great," Ilya quipped. "Note to self: don't lose the vertibird."

"Sorry. Elder Maxson's orders. We just can't spare another vertibird."

Upon touchdown, both Ilya and Dogmeat dismounted into a scantily constructed outpost. It was defensible enough, built atop a rocky outcropping to give the advantage of height, with sandbags and barricades around the perimeter, but it was nothing compared to the Brotherhood's usual standard.

She slid her gaze down to Dogmeat and shrugged. "Well this blows."

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me so far. Action starts in the next chapter. I hope everyone had a great New Years!


	5. No Man Left Behind

**Chapter 5: No Man Left Behind**

* * *

"Covering fire!"

Lasers speared across the night airs as combat erupted into full swing. The stink of burned flesh ripened with each hit on the mark, joined by the clangs of bullets hitting his steel. Paladin Danse advanced on his foes step by step, meeting their metal hail in an attempt to drive them back and give his team the chance to escape.

"Paladin!" One of his knights screamed over the music of battle. "Sir, you can't hold them alone!"

"Go, Lynch! That's an order!" Danse thundered to her. His power armour was wailing alarms under the constant flak, so he tossed a grenade to create a break. "Now!" He glanced back just before the frag went off to see his team scuttle from behind the dirt mound, hauling an unconscious raider between two of them. The break was short lived, as fire descended upon him with twice the previous force. Something popped on his armour's left arm, sending a jolt of pain up his bones and recoiling his aim, laser fire straying from its mark. He growled and retook a firm hold of his rifle, blazoning their ranks in flame wildly. They wouldn't put him down, not here, not yet.

"More 'nades! More! All of them! Put him down in fire! Fire!"

Danse had heard that same deranged voice hounding the enemy lines from the moment they began their pursuit, and each time it was released, all hell broke loose. He braced himself, crouching and sheltering his head and torso with his armour's shoulder guard as grenades spawned on his position. The next thing he knew, pain was his employer, the ground was gone from beneath his feet, and the sense of his stomach was still back there, somewhere.

Another ground rushed up to greet him, but it wasn't welcoming as it slammed him in his armour and crunched his flesh with its weight. He grunted in the impact and spat blood, fighting to right his senses and locate his rifle. Damn it. Never lose your rifle.

"He's down! Get him! Get him now, my little blood children! Taste his blood! Taste it! TASTE IT!"

Jesus. Screw the rifle. Danse forced his limbs to work and crawled to his knees, then his feet, relying mostly on what strength was left in his armour. His helmet visor was cracked and compromised half of his vision, but he just needed to move first, then he could worry about seeing. Above the beeping and fizzing of his suit, he could hear the incoming footfalls of maniacs hot on his tail. He wouldn't be torn down while fleeing. So his hand reached for the scattershot sidearm at his hip, and he spun on his closest assailant, pumping off two bursts right through the skull. A fluke, he was sure, since he couldn't see a damned thing.

The dead's brethren shrieked and roared for their vengeance, and the paladin peppered their advance with rays, this time less lucky as most were benign. One leapt at him. An armoured fist turned him to pulp immediately. Another went low for his midsection. He was swatted off and then promptly stomped to a puddle. The third thought about his approach, then flung his toothed machete for the broken plating on the left arm. But the right arm caught the machete and snapped the arm wielding it, ripping it from its joint to use as a bludgeon.

They stopped the melee then, and Danse, heaving in his breath, was free to push his armour to its shortened limits of speed, chased again by a herd of bullets, grenades, and maniacal taunts.

* * *

This one would get it in the groin this time, she decided. Widening her stance to prepare to support the kickback, Ilya waited for the gauss-sniper's V.A.T's system to hone in on its target and blink the neon green to show it was ready. She bit her lip, held her breath as if she were actually doing the aiming herself, and kept herself like a statue. The massive ordnance boomed through her bones and reared against her shoulder as it fired, sending an arc of energy through the distance.

The unlucky deathclaw took a direct hit to the groin, its lower half utterly obliterated from its torso, and was sent flailing back several metres, releasing a surprised roar that was cut short by the force of the impact it made with the ground. Ilya snorted in delight. That was for Nate. She set the sniper to prepare another charge to put the poor beast out of its misery, though it would have to suffer through the wait; the recharge time was excruciating.

"Danse would love this," she mused. Dogmeat barked beside her, as if in agreement, and she smiled beneath her helmet. "I wonder what big words he would use to describe it. _Harper, that outstanding armament's capability to discharge detrimental firepower is infinitely beyond outstanding!"_ Dogmeat barked at her again. "No? Too many _outstandings_?"

She hated to admit it to herself, but she was nervous to see him again. Which was stupid, childish. It had only been a few days. But even after all the adventures and the wounds and the awkward flirting, he was still that cold, intimidating, larger-than-life paladin that had told her off back in the police station for being a smartass to Knight Rhys. She played out their reunion in her mind as she waited for the gauss-sniper to charge.

Danse would say, _"Outstanding work. You're an inspiration to the Brotherhood."_

She would say something like, _"Gee, thanks, Big D."_

He would reply with, _"Are you ready to continue our mission, soldier?"_

And she would ask, _"I wonder what that would be, Big D?"_

Of course, he would say, _"To determine whether or not it's possible to get it on in our power armour. Prepare your body, soldier!"_

Ilya nodded to herself. That's totally how it would go down.

The gauss-sniper bleeped in readiness, and she launched the finishing shot on the deathclaw, effectively blowing it to shreds. She thought that Teagan may have missed the memo on specs. While not exactly tuned enough for a sniper, this thing would be boss for crowd control, the splash damage was equal to a grenade launcher. She almost wished Danse would lead back an angry mob of raiders for her.

"Incoming friendlies, check your fire!"

Ilya turned her visor toward the other knight stationed to guard the fallback base. He gestured her. "Harper!"

As she stomped over to cover them, five soldiers came rushing into the perimeter. Two were carrying an unconscious raider by the arms and legs, one was injured with a raw bullet wound to the thigh, and the other two were dishevelled and visibly pissed. The raider was dumped to the dirt as the two carriers rolled onto their backs, grimacing and panting.

"Scribes really fucked us over this time," one of the men reported, spitting dirt and leaning on his knees. He was almost entirely caked in oil and dust, the whites of his eyes flaring. "Lots of 'em. Too many. Went in quiet, but the things—" he sucked in air, "—those things must have smelled us out."

Ilya couldn't keep her concentration on scanning the landscape. "Danse. Where is he?"

The soldier wore a burdened face. "He stayed back to hold them off so we could evac the package."

Fucking typical, Danse. Ilya scanned outbound along the rolling dunes for any sign of battle, but the bloody glow in the air was too thick for her recon scope. She held in her curses but let loose her derision. "What happened to 'no man left behind'?"

She didn't wait to listen to the knight's protests of following orders, as her armour carried her toward the vertibird perched in the centre of the outpost. "Lancer-Knight Duval," she called back to the pilot. "You better be behind me!"

"You bet," she heard in response, and watched as the man agilely leaped aboard and breathed life into his bird.

Upon hearing the attention-getting bark from Dogmeat, Ilya shook her head and held out her metal-armoured palm. "No. Stay here, Dogmeat. It's too dangerous." He whimpered and flattened his ears, but obeyed, watching with sad pools of brown as the vertibird grew louder in preparation.

"Wait, I'm coming with!" One of the soldiers from the stealth op raced forward, while the others stood rooted to the spot and just watched her. She manned the minigun and gave Ilya a nervous nod. "Lynch."

Ilya returned Lynch's nod and slapped the back of the pilot's chair. "Take us in!"

They were airborne within moments and roaring through the red dusts on a steep bank as the pilot veered sharply. Up in the winds, the sounds of battle were delivered to their eardrums, and muffled explosions coincided with their brief flashes across the barren lands. No one spoke, it seemed they all knew how much of a shitstorm this was going to be.

Ilya could make out the throng of hostiles, erratic in their movements and embracing the bloodshed like a sport. She reined her vision in on the object of their warpath, a lone soldier clad in his power armour, breathing out lances of red laser-fire like a dragon in his wrath.

 _Danse._

She wasn't sure how he had managed to hold them off this long, but she knew he wouldn't be able to for much longer. His narrowing odds at life were etching out tiny fractures in her temperance, and she could feel the organ in her chest pounding against the wall of her armour. If she lost him now, she knew she would lose herself, too. But she blinked it all away and steeled herself. Danse had cosied up against a set of sharp boulders, eating grenades and bullets for breakfast in his last stand—it wouldn't be, if she had anything to say about it.

Setting the trajectory for her ordnance, Ilya braced against the vertibird's hull and fired. The gauss-sniper's kinetic projectile chewed through the radioactive dust and split a clear path through the sky, ending its journey at the centre mass of a raider before he could send off a shell from his rocket launcher. The result was nothing short of beautiful to the eyes of the deranged, the kinetic shockwave pushing out an event horizon that detonated the primed shell and set off a cascading effect. Several raiders were killed.

"Shot, Harper!" Lynch praised.

"This is gonna get hot!" the pilot warned next as they came in range for the minigun to open fire. Lynch promptly did so, and mowed down a line of raiders that were dug in behind a dune. The vertibird was met with a tide of lead as the raiders changed their focus, driving Lynch down behind the vertibird's hull for cover. Ilya had no such qualms, countering their fire with lead of her own as her assault rifle bucked in her grip.

Grenades began to sail high in their direction; a wasteful tactic, but it was still a threat if one of them just managed to roll aboard. Ilya switched flanks and took the minigun. "Stay down," she told Lynch, who gave a thumbs-up. As the minigun spun to life, the gauss-sniper joined it in readiness, and soon Ilya was pissing lead and lining up her next sharpshot. The minigun did the job of swatting any grenades before they reached the vertibird, punctuating the air with eruptions, and the gauss-sniper did the job of annihilating another target and blowing off the limbs of others nearby.

"I can't keep this up much longer!" the pilot yelled back from the cockpit. "We're taking too much fire!" The vertibird gulped in more bullets and coughed out smoke from one of the engines as if in agreement.

Ilya swore and zeroed her focus in on Danse, who had emerged from his cover to meet an onslaught of rabid attackers. It was a melee like no other down there, the dead earth painted in red and rage. She had never seen raiders so... feral.

"Drop me on Danse!" she shouted over the clatter, still spitting bullets from the minigun.

"Affirmative," the pilot acknowledged without argument, which she was thankful for. "But then I'm bugging out!"

She returned the favour and didn't argue with that. Shifting aside for Lynch to retake the gun, Ilya clutched the supports on the hull and awaited her moment, which couldn't come soon enough. She watched, fury simmering, as the raiders began to swarm Danse, climbing on his armour in droves, clawing at his plating, bashing with blunt weapons and stabbing at joints with sharp ones.

She couldn't wait any longer. Backing up, Ilya guided her power armour into a running leap, leaving the vertibird rocking in her wake. She roared away her fears in the descent, clutching her rifle to her chest like a lifeline. That moment of inert awareness ended abruptly as her weight pummelled the grounds, closer to Danse than she was expecting. The shockwave knocked the raiders from him, giving him ample time to pound at them with his scattergun, and snatch up a machete with his free hand to then plunge it into a man's chest.

The melee reawakened as the raiders scrambled to their feet and resumed their bloodthirst. Ilya, grinding her teeth, buried rounds into a few at point blank before more swamped in on her and began wrestling for her gun. She lashed out, striking one across the temple with her weapon stock, and landing a solid kick to the gut of another that pushed off many others. Crunching the face of yet another pest with an armoured hand gave her access to his machete, almost offered up to her as his hand flailed upon death. With it, she fed the rise of fury in her blood with wild slaughter, revelling in this new sensation of being up close and personal, this release in the slay.

Like the bliss without the chems.

A weight on her shoulders signalled a rodeo raider, but he was gone as soon as he climbed aboard by a single burst from Danse's scattergun. Ilya paid him the same courtesy, shooting off an attachment from his back, also. There was no time for an exchange of words, so together they created their own fortress, its walls impenetrable by the shifting currents of their movements and their reliance on only each other.

Through the murk of battle, Ilya soon realised that the raiders were retreating. It was nothing sudden, but they would diminish one by one, shrieking out their inane babble from over the dunes, swearing their vengeance and wailing for the dead.

Over it all, one voice rang out, loud and shrill. "The hunt will come! For your blood, YOUR BLOOD! My children will have their feast. Just wait. Just wait!"

Panting, the two armoured warriors just stood and watched the retreat for a long moment, bloodied and battered, wondering and weary, then one succumbed to a knee.

"Danse!" Ilya dropped her weapons and rushed to him, catching his chestplate before he could tip forward. "Danse, you're okay, I got you," she issued softly as he let out a breathy groan. For a moment that lingered, she just held him up and basked in the reality of being there, kneeling right next to him, and that he was safe, _safe,_ and not infected or paralyzed by those things out there. But then her eyes fell to his armour's butchered left arm, at the blood leaking from the elbow joint, and then to the sizeable combat knife protruding out above his shoulder, bloody fingerprints leaving a smeared trail down his back where a raider must have clawed on and twisted deeper at the knife. She grimaced thinking of the pain.

"Ilya?" she heard Danse murmur in disbelief, voice muffled under his helmet. "How... what are you—"

"Doesn't matter," she cut him off gently, ignoring the warmth in her chest that accompanied the reality of him calling her by her given name for the very first time. She would set that aside to think on later. Her armoured hand clumsily accessed the pouch fastened to her torso for a Stimpak. She then reached for his broken helmet and jerked it to the side slightly to unlock it from its seal, then pulled it off, knowing he was already exposed to the radiation with all the damage he had sustained. He made no protest, and spat blood onto the soil once he was free from the helmet.

She glanced at the crimson on the burned sand. Blood? Shit, not good.

Administering the Stimpak into his neck, Ilya waited for him to sigh as it dulled the pain, then she tugged off her own helmet and breathed in the radioactive air. She didn't care, she just wanted to meet his eyes with equal clarity.

Finally, he looked up at her and his thick brows rose slightly, as if he only believed now that it was really her. Ilya met his eyes with a tender, almost shy smile, and she saw it mirrored in his face for the briefest of moments: a twitch of the lips, a curving around the eyes, but then it all hardened again.

"We shouldn't stay here, we're too exposed." Danse attempted to rise, but his face contorted almost instantly and he flinched back down with a grunt. "Just give me a minute."

Glancing again at the fleck of blood on the sand, she gave him a sombre look. "How bad is it?"

"Don't worry. It's nothing serious," he assured, but she couldn't tell if he was being genuine or brushing it off. "Caught some flak and got knocked a bit."

She sighed and handed him a Rad-X with a bottle of water, which he thanked her for, then swallowed it down in a blink and poured the remainder over his head despite his tactical hood, shaking the water off like a wet dog. Without a word, she stood back up and tossed a vertibird signal grenade next to their position, watching as the red smoke snaked its way up to meld with the glow of the skies.

Danse pushed himself up a little straighter, wincing, but doing it nonetheless. "The Institute... your son—"

"We'll talk about it later," she cut him off again, a little firmer this time, and immediately regretted her rashness as those creases of concern worked their way into his forehead. She didn't really know why she wouldn't explain anything. Maybe because she hadn't decided what to tell him about Shaun. Maybe because she didn't know if she could trust him with it. She felt guilt curl in her stomach just for thinking that. After all, he hadn't breathed a word about the Railroad, or her position with the Minutemen. She trusted Danse with her life, but when it conflicted with Maxson's campaign against the Institute? The paladin put the Brotherhood before anything else, devoted to a fault, heart shaped by fire and steel. Was there any room left for his loyalty to her?

"You know," she began, shifting the mood to conceal herself and pacing back to him, "this isn't exactly how I imagined us meeting again."

His head gave a little jerk to the side in curious amusement. "How _did_ you imagine us meeting again?"

 _Prepare your body, soldier..._

Ilya thought carefully about her response, but she couldn't keep the grin from creeping up on her. "Doing something far more exciting than this."

"Well, that would have been ideal," he quipped in return, as if knowing where her mind was. He wouldn't know, of course, but she enjoyed the way his face lit up in mirth, and wondered what it would feel like to run her fingertips over his thick stubble and to his cheeks. Her wandering mind created a lull that left them staring at each other in a silence that soon grew awkward, having them both suddenly very interested in the sand beneath them as it slithered in the wind.

The incoming thunder of the vertibird relieved them both as they peered around to observe its approach, slower than usual with unhealthy smoke trailing in its wake. It had taken more of a beating than Ilya had realised. They were lucky it was still operational. Damn lucky.

"That will need some serious repairs once we get back to the Prydwen," Danse voiced her thoughts.

"So will you," Ilya stated bluntly.

He grumbled and shook his head at the sand, glowering. "Our mission here has been severely compromised. We underestimated not only their numbers, but their capabilities with these specimens, and now we've made a target of ourselves."

"You got what you came for, and you got everyone out alive. That's all that matters."

He peered up at her, all steel again under pinned brows. "It doesn't work like that, Harper. There are consequences when things aren't handled correctly, and I didn't handle this correctly, at all."

"The way I hear it, it was the scribes at fault, not you, Danse. You were sent in with shit-all to go on."

He bit off a sigh and shook his head again. "You don't know the details."

"What details?"

But he stood, painstakingly, with features burdened by his gloom, and lumbered for the landing vertibird ahead. "You'll hear at the debriefing once we arrive at the rendezvous point. Come on, let's get out of this godforsaken place."

For a moment, only her eyes followed him. She supposed she deserved that. Ilya tucked her helmet under an arm and eventually followed in his footsteps, mind drifting again to the Jet.

* * *

 **A/N:** I just want to thank everyone that has reviewed/favourited/followed, and contacted me with their thoughts and encouragements. I really appreciate it, and it motivates me to keep on writing. I didn't really think this would bring much interest, so it's been a nice surprise and my plans for it have grown a lot since it first started. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter :) It has definitely been my favourite so far, just because I have so much fun writing action.


	6. Sapphires and Shadows

**Chapter 6: Sapphires and Shadows**

* * *

His mind had never been so loud before, a disarray of doubts and unknowns, drowning out his usual coherency. Everything had been thrown at him at once; the region had far more hazards than predicted, the mission here had taken a turn for the worse due in large part to his poor judgement, and now Ilya's unexpected arrival had thrown him in more ways than one. He hadn't even thanked her yet, the courtesy having completely slipped from his mind. Had he known it had been her in that power armour fighting alongside him, he would have...

 _What?_ Danse chided himself. He had covered her when she needed it, and she hadn't needed it often. She had handled herself well, more than well, in fact she had been the one pulling _his_ hide out of the fire. She didn't need him looming over her every move like she were some squire.

But he just couldn't help it.

He stole a glance at Ilya as she stood in the vertibird's load, gazing out at the red haze with a hard concentration, jaw set and brows firm. Her hair was tangled and stringy, whipping across her face and catching on her features, features that he noticed were darker, brooding. What had the Institute done to her?

They shed few words on the flight back to the fallback point, save for Lancer-Knight Duval giving Danse a quick update on their situation. The small outpost looked just as underwhelming as it did before he set out with his squad, and his gut itched for him to have them all moved out ASAP before the raiders could mount a return assault.

The moment his armour's boot touched down from the vertibird, his second in command was upon him. "That was a close call, sir. But I never doubted you. Glad you made it out in one piece." The Knight-Sergeant gave him a relieved Brotherhood salute.

Danse looked over at Ilya as she greeted Dogmeat—why on earth did she bring the dog here?—before he gave his full attention to the man before him. "Knight Harper deserves all your commendations, Muller. As much as I hate to admit it, I'd be nothing but mincemeat if it weren't for her."

He didn't miss Muller's flicker of distaste at the mention of Harper. Her reputation for her sarcastic attitude and bold behaviour aboard the Prydwen during that first week hadn't quite been forgotten yet. The pre-war military must have been a lot softer on their troops in her day. So when the opportunity arose, he would put in a good word for Harper in hopes it would eventually wipe the slate clean of her Wastelander stature. One that she seemed in no hurry to clean, herself.

"No doubt that new prototype she's flaunting on her armour did most of the work," the sergeant muttered as he accompanied Danse toward the large tent set up for shelter. "It seems she's won Elder Maxson over with her... charms, among other things."

Was that supposed to be some offhand reference to her appearance? Suggesting she would use that to gain favour was low, even for Muller. And then, of course, suggesting that Maxson would resort to such practices was beyond repugnant, even near blasphemous. "Mind your tone, Sergeant," Danse warned before entering the flap, rounding on the man in full force. Muller may be a level-headed commander in the heat of battle, but he was a piece of work that Danse didn't have time for. "Harper's performance out there was nothing short of outstanding. She risked her life for her fellow soldier, just like any other in the Brotherhood would. You owe her your respect. And not only do you insult her, but you insult me as her sponsor and mentor. I won't stand for it."

Muller didn't seem surprised by Danse's reaction, but a palpable temper was being held in check with effort. "Of course. My apologies, Paladin. I spoke out of turn."

"Now in case you haven't realised, our situation here has been jeopardized, and we have little time for petty grievances. I suggest you rally everyone and have the first evac away in under ten minutes."

Not wasting the time to watch Muller sulk away, Danse swatted the tent flap aside a little too violently and thunked his broken helmet down on the nearest bench. Before he could disembark from his power armour, the tent flap rippled again, and Ilya stepped through, trailed by Dogmeat, who wagged his tail upon seeing him. Danse gave her a quick once-over to check on her status; she was out of her armour and in her Brotherhood uniform, and judging with his discreet glance, she hadn't sustained any injuries. Good. He also didn't fail to notice how the uniform hugged the contours of her lithe physique...

"What was that all about?" Ilya began casually with a flick of her head, indicating the previous scene with Muller.

Danse sighed and tried to cool off, continuing in pretending to rifle through some files on the table. "Nothing you need to worry about. Knight-Sergeant Muller just forgot his place for a moment, there."

She came closer and crossed her arms over her chest, voice suddenly pensive. "He doesn't like me, does he."

His hands ceased their pointless motions and he turned to her, unable to disrespect her by way of lying to her face. A face which looked oddly desolate. Since when did Ilya care whether she was liked or not? For as long as he had known her, she had a tendency to ruffle feathers with her words, and quietly enjoy it. "He has some reservations. Many do with new recruits. I wouldn't take it to heart."

She tried forcing a smile, but it died before it was ever born. "He's not the only one, though." He frowned at her in concern, analysing her sullen features carefully. She wasn't meeting his eye, instead staring blankly at the files he had spread across the bench.

"Give it time," he spoke softly, and when she didn't respond, he added, "remember when I told you I believed in you? I truly meant it, and it still stands."

Ilya looked up at him then, eyes of deep sapphire renewed with gratitude, and she smiled, fully. He returned it with one of his own, despite being distracted by the bloodshot whites surrounding her sapphires, and the shadows beneath them.

Right then, Danse decided to do away with the regulations. They were beyond all that, anyway. "What's really the matter?" he ventured.

Her eyes fell back to the bench, and they blinked repeatedly, lashes a black haze in motion. "Just..." she shrugged, "wanting to fit in. Feel like I belong somewhere."

"You belong with the Brotherhood, soldier," he chanted before he could stop himself. He was trying to speak as her equal, as her friend, not as her superior officer inciting her duty. It was a habit that would evidently take time to break.

As expected, Ilya bottled up again and masked her moment of doubt. "Thanks, Danse. But enough about me, I came in here to check on _you,_ " she exclaimed while nudging his chestplate with a gentle fist. "Some of these hits look bad."

Danse mentally kicked himself for failing her when she needed him. He didn't want it to be 'enough about her,' he wanted to get to the bottom of her troubles. He wanted to know what happened in the Institute, about the fate of her son, about her wellbeing. He wanted to know all of that even more than what intelligence she had uncovered from the Institute itself. Right now, he cared more about her than his mission here. It was a new feeling, and it scared the hell out of him.

Refocusing, Danse shrugged in his power armour, realising the knife above his shoulder was very much still there as it screamed within his muscle. "I'll get the scribes to patch me up once we get back to the Commonwealth," he ground out through the pain.

But Ilya clicked her tongue and crossed her arms. "Okay, come on. You. Armour. Out."

Knowing from experience how stubborn Ilya was when she set her mind to something, Danse knew there was no chance of him escaping this. "Fine," he grudgingly obliged and opened up his armour's seals. The plating over his shoulder grated along the knife's hilt and twisted in the wound, pulling a pained growl from his throat that he trapped in his teeth. His entire arm flared in agony and gave him a sharpened reminder of the bullet wound that had broken through his armour.

He was still navigating himself down when Ilya slipped in behind him and attempted to ease his struggle. Unprepared, his body tensed at her touch, which she picked up on at once and shied away as casually as she could. He regretted that, and had to avoid her eyes as he staggered over to the nearest chair and eased himself down, cradling his injured arm to his chest.

Ilya stood there, with that look on her face, the one she always adorned when he stepped out of his armour. Despite having seen him out of his armour plenty of times now, that look of... what was it? Curiosity? Shock? Distraction? Whatever it was, she never failed with it, every single time. It was like she never expected him to have a body beneath the armour. Despite the discomfort, Danse accepted the inevitable awkward silence, giving her time to adjust while he tapped his boot on the ground impatiently.

Eventually, she shook herself out of it. "Let me hook you up with some RadAway." Ilya dug into her backpack and produced a dose. She knelt next to him, and he let her attach the IV line into his vein, her touch cool and tender on his skin.

"Thanks, Harper," he extended gratefully, leaning back in the chair and waiting for the queasiness of radiation poisoning to dwindle. "And... thank you for the rescue back there. I'm sorry I hadn't said it earlier. To be honest, you were the last person I was expecting to see out here, and it threw me a little."

Her sad eyes gave way for a smile as she looked up at him. "It's okay. You don't need to apologise." After that, she adjusted the IV needlessly, then just remained kneeling there, vacantly staring at some point across the tent.

Danse was at a loss for what to do or say next. He had mentioned to her before that he wasn't very good at these sorts of things, but she didn't seem expectant. In fact she seemed rather content to just sit down there. And so he just sat there with her.

* * *

Ilya was enfolded by the dark of her mind. Here, in this fiery place, she could feel all the fury of the world crowding in and infecting her, urging her on like an encore. Yet that void in her soul was dampening it, keeping it from mounting and snapping. It was like there was a tug of war inside her head.

She couldn't stop seeing images of Shaun, old Shaun. He had her eyes, but his father's face, and that face haunted her. _Nate._ If only he was still here. They could deal with it all together, share the burden and pull through. But sooner or later, this world was going to swallow her, because she was alone. Utterly, terrifyingly alone.

Ilya looked up at the man beside her and wondered. He had a place in her, but she was devoid of any hope for it to become more than that. She had to be realistic with herself, put her foot down and accept what was reality and what was fantasy. Harden up. It was the only way to survive long enough to make a difference out here. Her life was lost beyond hope of finding happiness, she needed to set aside the selfish part of her humanity and adopt a new way of thinking, a way that would have her be a weapon for the people of the Commonwealth, and nothing more.

It just made sense.

Solidifying her resolve, Ilya breathed deeply and awakened Danse's attention. "So are you going to tell me what happened out there?"

He leaned forward again in his chair and looked down on her thoughtfully for a moment. "Are you going to tell me what happened in the Institute?"

God damn it. Ilya twitched her lips at him in annoyance, then sighed and stood, pacing across the tent to stall.

"If it's really that difficult to talk about, then I understand," Danse's voice carried over to her quietly after she had stood staring at the soil for a solid half minute.

Her anxiety was pumping blood fast against the walls of her veins. She had told Maxson that Shaun was dead, on a whim; eventually Danse would hear it from him. Shit. And she had told everyone at Sanctuary that Shaun was in fact alive; Danse would also eventually hear it from them. Double shit. Unless, she found a way to return home alone, and demand everyone lied to Danse that Shaun was dead. But then she would have to explain to them why she had told Maxson he was dead. Fuck. She knew she could trust most with the truth, that her son directed the Institute, but Deacon? He would have to tell the Railroad, and then they would be keeping a suspicious eye on her motives from then on. Double fuck.

Why did her two closest allies have to work for the two factions hellbent on destroying the Institute and her son? She had placed herself right in the middle of it all, all on her own, and someone was going to get hurt, there was no escaping it. This was the perfect recipe for disaster.

"Alright. I won't push it any further," Danse concluded. Ilya turned as he stood and began to make back for his armour. He was trying to be polite, but she could tell by his familiar scowl that he was disappointed.

"No wait," she blurted without thinking. He turned, and that scowl eased into surprise. "Uh..." she cleared her throat and racked her brain for words. Any. "You're right, it _is_ hard to talk about..." Danse took a step closer, face falling into sympathetic lines, but he was hesitant about coming too close. Maybe he didn't want to make her feel pushed. Or maybe—more likely—he didn't want to give her the wrong idea of his feelings toward her.

"But not here," Ilya decided. "I will explain things, just not here. It's too personal." _And I need more time to figure out if I can trust you with it._

Looking to be in someplace between disappointment and hope, Danse nodded. "Fair enough." His tone had no hint of resentment, just acceptance, and Ilya sighed in relief.

She smiled her appreciation, then gestured him over to the tent flap. "Now come on, You. You can't hide back in your power armour with a bullet in your arm and a knife sticking out of your shoulder. Let the scribe fix you up before the transport comes back." She was more worried that he might have internal bleeding, but refrained from embarrassing his pride even further.

"I assure you I'm fully capable of—"

"Don't try it, Paladin."

He responded well to her mock scold, giving up with a rare guilty chuckle. "Lead the way, then, Knight," he prompted in character.

Once outside and greeted by dust, they fell into step side-by-side and headed toward the neighbouring tent that had been used as a medical centre. Few soldiers remained at the outpost; only themselves, Muller, the field scribe, and one of the original knights that had stayed behind from the mission to guard it.

"Question," Ilya began. "What's with the shoddy defences here?"

Danse made a sound of annoyance. "Acid rain," he sighed. "Shortly after we arrived, we were hit with a wave of it and had to haul as much as we could under the cliffs to wait it out. We lost a lot of materials, and had to keep the outpost prepared for relocation in the event it should reoccur."

"Acid rain. This place really is hell on earth." She then looked over to the empty vertibird landing pad. "And the raider? Was he or she still alive?"

"His condition appeared stable. The specimen was still attached to the base of the skull, and it's safe to assume it was keeping him in an unconscious state to... evolve him. Did Elder Maxson give you a comprehensive briefing on what we know of them?"

"I got the gist of it," Ilya shrugged. "I already knew about them from a Minutemen outing. Raiders had used them to attack a farm run by Ghouls. They missed one, and she told us everything she saw. They took them, and it sounds like they're using them for some job they want done. We're trying to organise a rescue, and I was hoping the Brotherhood might lend a hand since we're all trying to stop these things."

Danse looked like he had a bitter taste in his mouth, and Ilya braced for the inevitable. "I highly doubt Maxson would commit resources to rescuing a bunch of Ghouls."

Pinching her tongue between her teeth, Ilya only tolerated his xenophobia with a neutral, "We'll see." Now wasn't the time or place.

Before they breached the medical tent, Dogmeat gave a piercing bark. The two soldiers halted in their tracks and turned, searching for him before they realised he had raced off for the outpost perimeter.

"Dogmeat!" Ilya called, but the canine was on a mission. She raced after him toward the barricades, hearing Danse's hurried footsteps in tow. When they caught up, Dogmeat was standing stiff on alert, tail poised, watching the red hellscape with a low growl in his throat.

"What is it, boy?" When Ilya peered outbound, she saw nothing. Apparently Dogmeat did, as his hackles were raised suddenly and the threat in his throat intensified.

"Safeties off," Danse growled at her back, reaching for his scattergun with his one good hand. "This can't be good." Ilya crouched down with Dogmeat and her hand drifted to her 10mm as Danse barked orders to the others. "Muller, Pascal, eyes outward. Cover our flanks. We may have company."

Before anyone could move, Dogmeat barked again, and Ilya saw it. "I see movement," she announced, indicating with a finger. "Coming over the dune." It was slight, but unmistakable, like the ground was moving, and it had a faint green hue.

"Specimens!" Danse hollered immediately. "Headgear on! Hold your fire until they come in range." He grasped Ilya's shoulder to get her attention. "I suggest we get back in our power armour."

"No arguments here," she agreed, sprinting close behind him, "but your arm."

"I'll be fine, Knight."

They both climbed inside their suits, meeting up back behind the forward barricades with weapons primed. She didn't like how Danse had no helmet due to its damage, but perhaps his tactical hood would serve as some protection if the things tried to attach to his head. Watching the things crawl closer like slim radroaches, Ilya felt fear of the unknown settle in her stomach. This was her first contact, and judging by everyone's hasty reactions, these things were definitely no radroaches.

Danse seemed to anticipate her unease. "Don't let them get close. If they do, grab them by the head and decapitate them before they can crawl to the back of your neck."

"Will the helmets stop them?"

"No," he answered frankly. "But it does slow them down."

Ilya exhaled and swallowed through a dry mouth, and it must have been louder than she meant, because Danse looked over and gauged her for a second.

"Be ready, soldier."


	7. Orange Colored Sky

**Chapter 7: Orange Colored Sky**

* * *

Inside the cavern, all he could hear was the distant drip of precious water, and the rasp of his own laboured breathing. The air was thick with heat, and there was little light, only a fire torch in the centre of the small space, but it was too far for him to reach in his state. It flickered teasingly at him, creating dancing shadows on the rocky walls that threatened to delude him.

He was naked, he couldn't see it but he could feel it, the cold rock pressing into his skin on an uneven, jagged surface, bruising to his bones. He tried to shift, but his hands were tied firmly behind his back and ankles secured together. He just wanted to find a comfortable position.

"Look, if Meek keeps bitching about it then I'll have one of her pets thrown into the Dark Blood. That should shut her up for good, unless she's finally gotten a taste for violence, in which case, tell her I'd be more than happy to show her a few ways to have a good time, if you catch my meaning."

He knew that voice. Third Degree. That man was cruel and brutal and insane. His face stained the memory, along with his eyes and his voice, ominous and grating. There was no escaping his malice.

"I think Meek would still like to talk this over with you herself," said another man in the distance. "I've never seen her this fidgety before. It's giving me the creeps just watching her prance about her cave, whispering under her breath like that."

Third Degree roared in irritation. "Fucking fine, I'll go see what she has to say! This woman's going to be the death of me, I swear!" The other man snickered, but Third Degree didn't sound like he appreciated that, as the damp sound of bone fitting flesh echoed through the rocks. "Don't fucking laugh at me! I'm in charge here while the commanders are away, remember? I'm sure they'll understand if I had you thrown into the Dark Blood, too. They'd probably like it, 'cause you're a little fucking rat!" Dull thuds of boots hitting guts came next, and it seemed to go on forever.

If only he could just get into a comfortable position, then he may be able to endure Third Degree, to face down his wrath like he had once done to other raiders. But back then, he had his brothers and sisters by his side. Now he was alone. The Brotherhood didn't have his back. Not down here.

"Ah! There you are, initiate boy! I missed ya!" It was Third Degree, picking up the torch and walking straight toward him with a toothy grin that made him want to dredge up his bile. "Gets a bit lonely down here sometimes," Third Degree went on, kneeling before him. "I like having someone to talk to, share my feelings with, but I have this habit of accidentally severing their fingers and having a munch in front of them. Nasty, I know, but my mother taught me bad habits."

Third Degree trailed his grubby hand over the initiate's face, swiping across the hairline almost tenderly, then brushing it down his face as if he were trying to smear his dirt there. "Such a young little face, still has his baby fat. I bet those cheeks are full of juicy blood. What a crime for the Brotherhood of Steel to send you out fighting to get all scarred and calloused up. Should have kept you locked up inside their airship, safe and chubby, ready to suck off the soldier-boys at the end of the day. But now look at you. It's their fault you got stuck with me, initiate boy. They sent you out as their fodder, to soak up our bullets so the big boys could charge in fresh and ready. They didn't give a shit then, they don't now. I'm all you got."

The initiate could smell Third Degree's stale breath this close. Decayed teeth. Metallic blood. Rotting flesh. His hand seized him by the face, fingernails digging into his cheeks. His crazed eyes loomed closer and his breath was suffocating.

"You feel like sharing today, initiate boy? 'Cause I don't. I want all those little fingers to myself. Some severed and roasted, some still ripe on the bone." He rolled his eyes in delighted anticipation and licked his cracked lips. "Mouthwatering. Maybe you'd like to try some? I could be persuaded to share, if you're a good boy."

The initiate shook his head vehemently, his willpower failing him. He just wanted to get into a comfortable position.

"Don't knock it 'til you try it!" Third Degree cackled and released him with a shove, sharp rocks piercing the soft flesh on his back to his spine. "Answer my questions like a good little boy, and maybe I'll only sample for today. Who were the goons that took Clay-Crawler?"

The initiate shook his head. Third Degree was wrong. The Brotherhood had been good to him. They had given him a home when he had none, they had fed him when his stomach growled and shrivelled, and they had given him friends that would give their lives for him in a heartbeat. And there was Grace. Sweet, caring, funny Grace, who helped him up that first day when he tripped on his bootlace and splattered his lunch everywhere. She had laughed at him, but she had made him see the humour in it, too.

"Your loyalty to them is pathetic, initiate bitch," Third Degree snarled. "Weak, when you know they left you out to dry. Keeping hope where there is none is what's gonna eat you alive down here, you can trust that. Now, you might remember this one from the last time we played this game: Who leads the Minutemen?"

The initiate continued to shake his head, trying with all his might to hold in the sob that kept pushing against his throat.

"I was hoping you wouldn't have anything to say." Third Degree produced a serrated switch-blade, dried blood crusting along the edges, and he reached over to cut loose the rope tying the initiate's hands. Once released, a finger was picked out, his pinky, and the blade kissed it.

"No, no, no, no, wait!" the initiate sobbed out in desperation. "I told you last time, I don't know who leads the Minutemen! I'm just a soldier. We only just got to the Commonwealth a few weeks ago, maybe over a month! We don't have anything to do with the Minutemen! I'm telling you the truth!"

Third Degree seemed to consider that, looming over him, the blade still resting against the base of his finger and slicing the skin. Then he shrugged. "Well, maybe they should know, and should have told you, because now this is their fault, too."

The pain was white-hot at the moment it happened, almost so hot that it passed his senses, but as the shredding motions began, the pain bloomed and then travelled up all his nerves. He was barely aware of the sounds of grating flesh for his screaming, but when it reached the bone, he was aware, very aware. Everything jolted and throbbed in that one small centre, and when Third Degree began to dig into the joint and rip it away sinew by sinew, the initiate's vision went as white-hot as the pain and the sounds of his own screaming grew more and more distant. Soon only his heartbeat was present.

* * *

"Shit! The fuck?" Ilya called out, rifle scanning frantically after some of the specimens had burrowed into the dirt. They had held them back well until now.

"They've gone under!" Danse shouted above the gunfire. "Shoot the dirt and keep mobile, don't let them get the jump on you!"

"You didn't tell me they could do that!"

There wasn't time for his reply, as their position was assaulted from beneath, gangly green limbs thrashing and snapping up at them. Ilya had barely gotten a good look at the things before the chaos ensued, and they were fast, darting out of the line of fire before she could land any decent hits. Not moving fast enough, something ruptured up under her armoured feet, latching onto the steel and attempting to ascend her legs. She tried shaking it off, but it clung with some type of suction on its limbs and began making progress toward her armour's torso. Panicking, Ilya forgot all about Danse's advice to decapitate it, and pushed at it with her rifle, its black eyes bulging at her in retaliation as it gave a horrid hiss. It really did look like a snake with legs, but grotesque and even more terrifying.

She was about to belly-flop on the thing when Dogmeat leaped up at her and seized the specimen in his jaws, pulling at it several times until it finally came loose. She trained her barrel on it as Dogmeat shook it vigorously and drew green blood as his teeth sunk in deeper. From all the times she had watched him throttle every teddy bear he had found in the Wastes, she thought the specimen had no hope against his grip, but she was wrong.

The thing slashed out with its tail, catching him on the leg and loosening his grip just enough to where it could scrape at his snout with its scaly legs and pry free. Dogmeat yelped and shook himself, and before Ilya could get a clean shot on the specimen, it pounced back on the canine and attached itself around his throat with its elongated body.

Ilya paid no mind to the skirmish around her as she rushed in to her baby's aid, stepping on a specimen and slapping another from the air with her armoured forearm as it flung itself for her. The thing was tightening around Dogmeat's throat to subdue him, and he was making an unbearable heaving sound that drove Ilya wild with distress.

"Get off him you fucker!" she shrieked as she gripped at its body and attempted ripping it away. Her power armour would have made an easy job of it, had another specimen not leaped for her helmet and skittered for the back of her head. She yelled out in pure frustration and went to grab at it, but her suit was too bulky to reach back far enough. Feeling her helmet being pushed up and something slipping around her neck, Ilya growled and thought it was over.

Before the specimen could settle itself in place, there was a commotion across her head, she felt the thing being torn off her scalp, heard a sickening rip of flesh, and saw Danse toss the headless creature to the dirt before he grabbed her and pushed her down, standing over her to fend off more of the damned things.

Ilya pushed her hair out of her face, forgetting her suit and nearly knocking herself out with her armoured hand in the process. She looked for Dogmeat amongst the hectic melee, and cried out at the sight of him, almost ready to keel over as the specimen strangled the life from him.

Danse must have paid attention to her anguish, because he immediately rushed forward and ripped the thing from Dogmeat, tearing it in half with both hands before continuing to laser down more contacts, covering both the woman and the canine.

Eventually Ilya found both her wits and her assault rifle and aided the fight, crouching directly over Dogmeat as he gave dry coughs and slowly recovered. They were soon in the clear, the ground littered with dead and dying, green blood, and laser scorching.

"You alright?" Danse asked her in a husky voice, a little breathless.

Ilya nodded. "Yeah, thank you." She was also short of breath, both from the exertion, and from losing her cool. "You?"

"I'm fine," he replied in that tone of assurance he so often used, and right now, she was extra thankful for it. "Get your helmet back on, in case more show up." He then looked around for the other two soldiers and the scribe, and made off along the barricades toward one of them.

Ilya watched him in admiration for a moment; his arm had been both shot and stabbed, he had some sort of internal injury, and he was probably exhausted, but still he managed to save her ass, Dogmeat's, and most likely did most of the killing here himself. She felt like a whelp in comparison, drained from insomnia, stress, and hunger, and twitchy from the Jet.

Before slotting her helmet back on, Ilya checked Dogmeat over as he rested on his stomach, whimpering at her with flattened ears. She stroked his fur as gently as her armour would allow. "You sore, Dogmeat? It's okay now. We got them all. They won't hurt you again. Thanks for helping me out with that thing. I'm sorry I couldn't return the favour." He just listened to her voice with big attentive eyes and licked her dirty cheek when she bent in to press her forehead to his and gather her breath.

Lifting the canine in her arms, she had carried him halfway back to the tents when she heard Danse call out for her. She quickly settled Dogmeat down inside a tent and then raced out for the soldiers, finding Danse, Muller, and the scribe standing above Pascal, who was lying prone and unconscious on the ground. A specimen was attached to his head.

"Shit," Ilya breathed, and all men nodded slowly in agreement.

Danse took a knee next to the knight and closely inspected the situation without contact. Pascal's breathing was shallow, his chest rising and falling in long intervals, and his face was paler than Ilya remembered underneath the layer of soot he had built up. Every now and then, his hand would twitch, and the specimen would stretch its limbs across his scalp as if enjoying itself.

The scribe pointed near the base of the skull. "I see the entry point there. It looks to be some sort of needle-like joint or membrane, inserted directly through the skin."

"We need to get it off him," Muller exclaimed loudly, obviously perturbed.

Danse shook his head, still peering down on the poor knight. "I'd advise against it. We have no idea what could happen to him if we disconnect it."

"I agree, sir," the scribe put in.

"But, sir, we have no idea what it's doing to him right now! What if the longer we leave him, the more damage it's doing?" Muller was almost beside himself, and Ilya found that she couldn't blame him.

"We don't have the necessary intel to make such an assumption, Sergeant," Danse replied steadily, standing to look the man in the eye. "The best we can do for him is take him back to the Commonwealth and see how the scribes want to handle it." He looked to the scribe for confirmation, who nodded and continued examining the creature. Muller didn't take it any further, mumbling his assent and lowering his gaze to the ground, so Danse turned to Ilya. "You think you can keep a lookout for us with that ordnance, Knight?"

"No problem," she nodded. Despite the chain of command, Ilya rarely referred to Danse as 'sir' anymore, and he never rebuked her for it. It had become an unspoken arrangement between them, given all their time together off the Brotherhood's leash. They were more partners and less paladin and knight.

As Danse gently lifted Pascal's limp body and moved him back near the landing pad, Ilya took the forward barricades and scouted out the rolling dunes once more. The sun should be ready to crack the horizon, but she wondered if it would make any difference out here, with the oil wells aflame and glowing across the dense mist.

Within time, the vertibird returned for them, still trailing smoke, and now wavering in its flight path in difficulty. Danse was doing his thing and rounding everyone up with his commanding timbre, when Ilya spotted more movement in the distance. She announced it loudly, and didn't wait for Danse's command as she locked onto the centre of the mass of specimens with her gauss-sniper and let loose a projectile.

Many of them were wiped out, and chunks of their flesh flew in all directions. Ilya knew her assault rifle would be useless at this range, so she turned from the barricades and went into the tent to retrieve Dogmeat, while the others piled into the vertibird. That was when the ambush struck, again. She had just burst out from the tent flap when the specimens popped up from the dirt, dozens strong, and scurried for her and Dogmeat. Being defenceless with her arms occupied, she did the only thing any born protector would do, and turned to protect Dogmeat, crouching down and fully presenting the back of her head without thinking.

Laser fire hailed upon her, along with dull thuds of specimen corpses whacking into her armour. She smelled the ozone and burned flesh even through her ventilation system, and saw the flashes of red and shower of green blood all around her. When it quieted, she heard Danse yelling at her to _move it, soldier!_ and she did.

The take-off was rough, it seemed the vertibird could barely support the weight of two power armour units, and by the time it finally took to the air, the incoming wave of specimens were springing up from the ground to reach the troop load.

They fired down on them, holding them off, but what really put them in the final clearing was Ilya's gauss-sniper as effective crowd control. They all watched the outpost become overrun as they gained distance.

"We're clear. Detonate, Sergeant," Danse said, and Ilya found herself in the front row seat to one hell of a fireworks show. The outpost bloomed into a mesmerising eruption, capturing the eyes of all aboard and then heartening them all to cheer in victory. The heat curdled into smoke soon after, leaving nothing but charred remains.

"So that's what you guys were doing while I was keeping watch," Ilya chuckled after everyone had finished their _Ad victoriams._

"That dog is going to be the death of you, one of these days," Danse piped up to kill the mood as he rotated her way, one arm grasping the overhead handhold. His drawn brow said more than his words.

"This dog has saved my life more times than I can remember," she shot back, carefully placing Dogmeat down on a spread of seats. Although the canine was content to be carried around, he seemed to have perked back up and was looking from his mistress to Danse repeatedly as if enjoying their exchange. "He was the first friend I made in this fucked up world," Ilya added as she pulled off her helmet.

Surprisingly, Danse relented and diverted his gaze out to the skies streaming them by. His face, now just as dirty as everyone else's, slackened a little and his brow grew heavy. She had apparently hit a nerve, just then. "I suppose I can understand that," he eventually mumbled.

Ilya wondered if he had been thinking of Cutler, his friend of the past who he had met in D.C before joining the Brotherhood, who had unfortunately been turned Super Mutant, and who Danse had been forced to shoot dead. She still found it hard to imagine Danse in another life, as a junk merchant in Washington D.C. He must have been, well, normal back then. Just a young man scraping out a living for himself, no doubt making all the girls swoon over his good looks. Or maybe he had been a loner, a dork, or an asshole. Hell, he was all of those combined, she realised. But he was Danse.

After a few moments of quiet flight, Danse spoke up again. "I have to mention how well you handled that ordnance, soldier. A lot of us aboard the Prydwen had a hand in giving advice on its schematics, and it's good to see it finally in action. I'll have to requisition one for myself once the design gets the go-ahead for mass production."

Ilya had been wondering when he would comment on it. Honestly, power armour with a giant gun welded onto the shoulder wasn't her preferred way to get around. Sure, it was a nice power trip and left her heady with the adrenaline, but she favoured a more agile approach, with the ability to actually be able to sneak up on her enemies without stomping around like a T-rex on its tip-toes. That was more Danse's style.

"I thought you'd like it," Ilya grinned roguishly at him. "How's it look on me?"

Her flirtatious prompt caught Danse out of his comfort zone, which was exactly what she was intending. "It looks... very impressive on you," he tip-toed carefully, which made her grin even more. She knew a woman in power armour with a mighty weapon on her shoulder was probably a form of pornography for him.

"We can share it," Ilya then proposed. "I'm not much of a sniper, anyway. You can use it when my armour's off duty."

"I appreciate it." His eyes glinted their thanks.

The flight across the Rad Lands was soon graced by the rise of the sun, diffusing the red glow into an orange warmth. It was oddly alluring, almost heavenly, like a highly saturated sunrise in the Commonwealth. Ilya felt herself slowly drifting off, daydreaming of the old days when her and Nate would stay in bed all morning as the sun warmed the room. She would be in his arms, and his hand would be caressing her face endlessly, and she would draw little circles on his chest with her fingers, and he would stroke her hair until he was intimate with every single strand. They wouldn't talk, they didn't need to, they would just meld into each other and stare into souls through eyes, and then eventually let their bodies take them into the world of bliss they had created just for themselves.

Jet.

Ilya blinked and tried to shun the urge, but it tapped on her skull like a persistent pest.

Jet, Jet, Jet.

With a feverish need, her fingers clicked at her Pip-Boy, dashing through settings and displays before she reached the radio selection and bashed the activate key. It cut into a merry song midway, boasting trumpets and a smooth, swaying vocal. She knew it immediately: Orange Colored Sky by Nat King Cole.

 _"_ _...drinking in sunshine_

 _When out of that orange-coloured view_

 _Flash! Bam! Alakazam!_

 _I got a look at you..."_

Ilya sighed in relief at the bouncing tune, but everyone aboard the vertibird gazed her way with incredulous faces, their peace interrupted. Even Danse's eyebrows soared in surprise, and he gave her a curious look. She smirked and shrugged, bobbing her head to the tune and the fitting lyrics. Eventually everyone settled into the music and let it be the soundtrack to their flight back, and yes, even Danse had settled into it, she noticed. His finger was tapping against the upper handhold in microscopic detail. He caught her watching him with a smile, and shook his head with a tiny smirk of amusement.

" _I was walking along, minding my business,_

 _When love came and hit me in the eye..."_

Ilya couldn't help glancing back in Danse's direction then. It was a fleeting dart of the eye, but one that was met in kind with his own fleeting glance. Startled, they both looked away again and pretended to focus out on the orange skies.

" _Flash! Bam! Alakazam!_

 _Out of an orange-coloured, purple-striped, pretty green polka-dot sky_

 _Flash! Bam! Alakazam! And goodbye..."_

* * *

 **A/N:** Cheesy, I know :P


	8. Clay-Crawler

**Chapter 8: Clay-Crawler**

* * *

Ilya listened absently as Danse addressed all those stationed at the rendezvous point in the Commonwealth, toying with her combat knife and marking the grass with a noughts and crosses game.

"...most of you know we had some setbacks during the mission. Knight Pascal was incapacitated by a specimen and is being monitored by the medical staff here, and our raider package happened to be of high profile, judging by the reaction of the enemy and comments they made while in pursuit..."

Ilya forced herself to listen more closely, then. So that was what happened out there. They snatched up someone important by accident and pissed off the entire horde.

"My scouts reconnoitred the area to utmost standards before we proceeded in. The lapse in judgement was entirely my own, and I take full responsibility for the consequences. So with that being said, be on your guard. We underestimated their capabilities, and I won't let it happen again."

Ilya followed every flicker of detail on Danse's face as he set the noose around his own neck for this. His face was, as usual, hard as steel, prepared for judgement. She didn't know what the Brotherhood of Steel's punishments entailed, but she imagined them to be nothing short of harsh.

After he had finished debriefing, the small crowd dispersed back to their duties, and Ilya headed for Danse before he could slip away. He was out of his power armour again, and had tossed his tactical hood due to the build-up of grime. She never could get over how thick his hair was when set free—she had first expected it to be closely shaved in a buzz cut—and she longed to run her hands through it and feel it slip through the cracks in her fingers. It made him look younger too, less rugged—not that she didn't appreciate the ruggedness. Eyes wandering, she took her time approaching him, admiring the display of well-formed muscles, and his hair wasn't the only thing she wanted to run her hands over.

Eventually, Ilya caught his eye, and she cradled her elbows almost sheepishly. "Hey," she offered softly, accompanying it with a warm smile.

"Harper," he sighed, and the tautness in his features fell slightly. She was glad he could let his guard down around her now, even when in a Brotherhood compound. "Have you gotten yourself something to eat since being back?"

A flash of surprise came over her that his first words were concerning her health, rather than the immediate matter of the raider. He must be keeping tabs on her weight loss, too. A pang of guilt hit her for it, so she nodded encouragingly to his query; she had been starving, and fixing the ache in her stomach had been the first thing she tended to after they settled into the rendezvous. "I got a few sideways looks for the massive portion of Fancy Lads I stuffed myself with." _Wait, why the fuck did I just say that?_ "Uh! Not the... you know what I mean..." She fought off the reddening under her skin.

Danse only gazed at her curiously, a single brow rising, and she was sure he was suppressing a smile. "Well, it's good to hear you got your fill, either way." She pinned him with a wary look, not sure if that was supposed to be a dig, but he either seemed not to notice or blatantly ignored it. "And how's Dogmeat doing?"

"He's gonna be alright. Has some bruising and a sore throat, but the scribe said he'll be fine." She was glad he asked after Dogmeat, whether it was due to actual concern over the animal, or just for her benefit, she didn't mind. It was a step out of his comfort zone to make the effort, and that was progress.

Danse nodded, then gestured for her to follow him toward the centre of camp. "No doubt you're still eager to know how I screwed things up out there."

"First, I want to ask how you're feeling," Ilya replied, indicating his arm. Scribes had practically swarmed him the moment they touched down in camp, demanding he leave his armour and let them tend to his wounds. She had been thankful for their determination, even when he protested in order to see to the raider's status. They weren't having any of it.

"I'm doing fine, Harper," Danse responded in his usual shrug-it-off, authoritative-assurance manner, rounding his shoulder as if to show her he had retained full range of motion. He wasn't even in a sling, just tightly bandaged up and stabbed with Stimpaks beneath his uniform. "A few hits won't keep me down."

"Obviously," she quipped. No internal bleeding, thank god. Probably just some internal bruising and maybe a broken rib that he wasn't mentioning. "And you don't need to explain anything to me. Things go wrong in the field. It happens."

"It should never have happened under my command."

"You're too hard on yourself."

Danse sighed, a despairing sound that hurt her to hear from him. "Maybe," he uttered. "But if I'm not, then who will be?"

"Kells," she was quick to answer. "I'm pretty sure he loves every second of it." But Danse didn't acknowledge her wit, content to let his self-doubt consume him. It was just like the time he had brought up his concerns over Haylen, which was really a cover for his insecurity over the fate of nearly his entire squad. He really was human, after all.

"At this level of my career, relying on my superiors for discipline is a sign of weakness," he shot down the concept. "I won't lower myself to such standards."

"Danse," Ilya stopped him with a hand on his arm. They rarely came in physical contact outside of pulling each other into cover in the heat of combat or patching up each other's wounds, and it stunned him enough to stop him. Despite her own timidity in his presence, she forced the words to be stern. "You need to stop this. You're human, you make mistakes, and dwelling on things will only take you down a bad road." _Like me._

He considered for a moment, brown eyes searching her, then nodded and sighed again. "You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be putting all my troubles on you. You already have enough to deal with as it is."

 _Damn it, that's not what I meant._ But it seemed to have been of at least some help, as his face lifted a shade on the mood scale, and he beckoned her onward again.

"Come on, you wanna see our resident raider? The scribes have made some interesting discoveries already."

Sighing, Ilya trailed in his footsteps and entered a tent much like the ones set up in the Rad Lands, except here, there were much more medical staff on hand, and most were standing around a sole man on a cot.

"Any changes, Ketway?" Danse asked an older scribe, who gave Ilya a critical look with his shrewd eyes before addressing his superior.

Fuck sakes, she didn't even have to open her mouth before being judged.

"Paladin Danse, no distinct changes thus far, as he's still in a comatose state and unresponsive to outside stimuli. But we have learned a far deal more about the specimen since your initial visit. We have confirmed that the infection is only communicable through direct connection with these specimens, and that mutations are selective with each individual, such as increased muscle density, electrolyte counts, which involve increased reflexes and tissue healing rate, and an evolved radiation resistance. I'm working on a comprehensive file, but if you'd prefer, I can have one of the scribes here to explain the details with you, in a more plain language, of course?"

Ilya immediately had this Senior Scribe Ketway pegged as a complete smartass, and was thankful for Danse's following shutdown.

"If it's nothing that can help us fight them more effectively in the field, then I think I'll pass on the intricate details, thank you, Ketway."

"As you prefer, sir," Ketway drawled with an undercurrent of snob.

Danse let it slide. He had obviously had some experience with the scribe and thought it best left alone. "Any updates to report on Knight Pascal's status?"

"Unfortunately, none, sir. He's in a similar boat to this young man," Ketway answered regretfully, indicating over to Pascal on the other side of the tent.

Ilya observed Danse after that, but her earlier words had apparently bolstered his resolve. He nodded to the scribe and thanked him, peering over at Pascal with a sullen look, but it didn't consume him like it once had. Pascal was surrounded by his own mob of scribes and doctors, and would soon be shipped back to the Prydwen for the best care possible.

She turned her attention to the raider lying on his side to accommodate for the creature fused to the back of his shaved head. His body had been cleaned from all the dirt and oil, and he was garbed in a patient gown. His face was young, she even dared to guess he may not even have reached his twentieth year, yet. Still, he was severely battle-scarred, the most prominent being a poorly stitched and healed mark travelling the full width of his forehead. Smaller scars around his face spoke of many brawls involving sharp instruments, and then she noticed an even smaller mark down by his chin. She stepped in, past the scribes, and bent lower to see it. It looked like a tattoo of a very basic, primitive design of a claw mark.

A flash of eyes, and pupils shrank at her. The raider jolted awake, and before Ilya could flinch back in fright, Danse had his arm across her to push her back behind him. She didn't even know how he got to her so fast.

"She, she, she!" the raider stammered out loudly, attempting to point at Ilya but finding his wrists strapped to the cot. He was mouthing something like a fish out of water, and his eyes were glued to Ilya with such wide desperation that it made her shiver. She was grateful for Danse's arm, which was still cast across her protectively and showed no sign of lowering.

"What the hell is wrong with him?" the paladin demanded of the scribes, voice harsh with alarm.

The staff were all running around like headless chickens, checking monitors and calling out things both Ilya and Danse had no clue to the meanings. The specimen was still firmly locked to the raider's head, its snake-like body wrapped around his throat, but it seemed inanimate.

"It seems he's woken up," Senior Scribe Ketway stated the obvious, "and he has a special interest in your Knight, there. At least now we know that the restraints are enough to hold him, for now."

Ilya would have appreciated the security of Danse's arm pushing her even further behind him, if she weren't so focused on what the raider was trying to say. He was still trying to point at her, jerking his arm relentlessly in the restrains as if he couldn't comprehend its hopelessness, his eyes still pierced her with their unblinking intensity, and his mouth was expressing a multitude of nonsense.

"It's her. Her. Her. She. She. It's right. They said. Eye Daddy. Meek. They. They. The Sight. Sad eyes. Angry eyes. Her. Her. Her."

That was enough for Danse. "Put him out," he growled to Ketway.

"Sedative ready," a younger scribe offered immediately, waiting on Ketway's confirmation with a syringe in hand.

"No, wait!" Ilya halted the scene with her raised voice, stepping out from behind Danse's protection. "Let me talk to him."

"Harper, it could incite him to dangerous levels. We don't know how strong he could be when provoked," Danse was quick to protest.

"Actually," Ketway cut in, having to raise his voice over the raider's incessant ramblings, which were dialling down in volume after Ilya had moved closer. "It appears his muscle mass shows only small amounts of increased density."

"We could at least try to find out who he is," Ilya pressed, turning back to Danse.

"He's scum, brought here for experimentation and interrogation, nothing more. In this state, we're not likely to get anything useful from him."

Ilya countered his grim features with pleading eyes. "Look at him, he's just a kid."

"Not a kid," the raider said at once, and everyone turned to him in surprise. "Not a kid," he repeated, now directing his bloodshot gaze solely at Danse. "A fighter. A killer. Like him." He then slipped his eyes back to Ilya, and they glazed over with something that made her shiver again. Was it reverence? Fascination? "But quick. Silent. When I must be. Like her. _A whisper."_

Whisper. That was what the Railroad called her. She was adept in the art of quick, clean headshots, what Danse called his Crackshot Knight. She was also light on her feet, swift with a small blade in the dark, and a sly thief. Danse didn't have a nickname for that, because he didn't know.

"What's your name?" Ilya sought, though staying at length.

"Clay-Crawler," he supplied willingly. "Earned it. Won a race. Leg was hurt. Crawled."

"Clay-Crawler," she echoed, tasting the name. "I like it." Then she flashed him a smile, and watched as he smiled back eagerly, like a child being praised. "But you must have had a name before winning the race?"

Clay-Crawler hummed and lowered his voice like he was speaking a secret. "Did. Number. 847. 847. 847. Can't forget. Was a slave. Dug tunnel. Shovel dirt on fire. Before, was Ethan. Red Claw. Fight Dark Bloods."

There was a lot of information in there. Ilya came closer with slow steps, ignoring Danse's protest from behind. Clay-Crawler grew visibly nervous in her proximity, but she wanted to know what it all meant. "Red Claw? Dark Bloods?"

"Red Claws. Home. Where I came from. Good killers. Dark Bloods. Bad people. Slavers. Cruel. But not all cruel. Told of you. Kept secret."

That sent a prickle across her skin. Why did he put so much emphasis on her? "Who told you of me? What were you trying to say before? You said something about the Sight. Do you have it?"

"The Sight!" he burst out, sitting up straighter in the cot. "No. No Sight. Not here. It told of you. Awaken. See sad eyes. See angry eyes. You!"

"You know someone with the Sight? Who?"

"Meek. Eye Daddy."

Ilya frowned in confusion, crossing her arms and shaking her head. She needed a shot of Jet just to talk with this guy. "Meek eye daddy? Is that a person?"

"Not one. Two. Two people. Spirit people. Help slaves."

Ilya had to take a moment to process it all, running her fingers through her hair as thoughts fermented. She was more tired than she realised. "Why did the Sight show them me?"

A small frown hovered over Clay-Crawler's scarred forehead. "Not know. Just said I awaken. See you."

"If I can interrupt, can I ask what all of this is about?" Senior Scribe Ketway spoke warily from across the medical cot. She transferred her gaze to see the confusion on not only his face, but all the other scribes in the tent. "The Sight? What is that?"

"It's just something we've heard of out in the Wastes, Ketway," Danse promptly came to the rescue, which took Ilya by surprise. The Brotherhood didn't need to know about Mama Murphy's odd gift; if they believed it was true, they might intend to 'recruit' her for their own needs. Despite the fact that Danse had refrained from mentioning it to the Brotherhood all this time, it still surprised Ilya that he had just outright lied to them when asked directly. She watched him with renewed wonder. Maybe his loyalty to her was greater than she realised.

"A myth," Danse went on, "nothing substantial. Just the kind of thing these uneducated raider scum would lower themselves into believing." His attitude was convincing enough.

Clay-Crawler jiggled oddly in his restraints and shook his head, eyes pinned on Danse. "No! No. No. Sight real. Valued. Gives Dark Bloods power."

Ilya scurried to change the subject, capturing the young raider's attention once more with purposeful eyes. "Clay-Crawler, you said the Dark Bloods took you as a slave, were cruel to you. Would you... be willing to tell us more about them?"

He nodded energetically, eyes rippling as if lit from within. "Will tell all. To thank. You rescue me. From slavery. From Slay."

"Slay? Do you mean execution?"

He frowned, then his eyes gained a distant quality, and his face twisted with disdain. "Slay is a leader. Battle commander. Cruel woman. Kept me as... personal slave. Toy."

Ilya rolled that around in thought for a moment. "You were her sex slave?" Clay-Crawler deflated in humiliation, nodding his head silently as he kept his gaze down. Looking over at Danse, Ilya read the lines of reconsideration on his face. "Sounds like you did good, after all, Danse."

"So it would seem," he said, though still with a hint of uncertainty. "Now we know exactly why they pursued so tenaciously. Disappointing one of their commander's must be punishable by death."

"Uh," Clay-Crawler perked up again before Ilya could ask any more questions. "Please. Name?"

He had that look again, the revering eyes that unnerved her. "Ilya," she gave steadily, despite the effect.

"Ilya," he repeated, nodding and smiling too brightly. Then he looked to Danse. "Dance. Fighter, and dancer?" It was a genuine question, without any mockery, but it irked Danse.

"No. Danse with an S." When the raider only looked confused, and Ilya was failing at hiding her smirk, Danse sighed and waved him off. "Never mind. You probably can't even write."

"No. Not write. But fight. Kill well... I help?"

"Yes," Ilya confirmed. "We need your help to fight them."

"Help you fight. Go back to Blood Lands. Kill all Dark Bloods."

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks again for all the continued support and views. I really value every view/follow/fav, and your reviews mean a lot, just the fact that you took the time. Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts, if there's something you would like me to focus more on, or less on.


	9. War of Wills

**Chapter 9: War of Wills**

* * *

"I'm still not convinced we should trust this Clay-Crawler."

"I understand, Elder," Ilya kept her voice level in response, trailing behind Maxson's quick pace on the upper catwalk of the Prydwen. He seemed to think he could escape her determination. "That's why I'm willing to go in myself, unofficially."

Elder Maxson halted and wheeled on her sharply, making Danse, close in tow, have to catch his momentum on the railings with both hands to keep from bowling both of them over in his newly repaired armour. "In no way will I allow you to do that, Knight. Your actions represent the Brotherhood of Steel, officially on our behalf, or unofficially. And do I really have to remind you how much of an asset you are to us against the Institute? Throwing yourself to those raiders would mean failing the Brotherhood."

"Then, sir, please give the Minutemen a chance. They're gaining numbers every day, and a lot of them are experienced marksmen and tacticians. They just need some heavy firepower to back them up."

"Efficient or not, they're still few, and I don't make a habit of risking my most valued men and women in bad odds."

"You won't have to worry about that if you give me the backup I need, just co-ordinate with the Minutemen," Ilya drove on, pushing her tone and meeting Maxson's glare in ferocity. "Come on. Together, we'd have the forces to push them back from Dunwich and scatter them long enough to assault them dead centre out in the Rad Lands."

"You overestimate yourself, Harper," Maxson snapped, all contained in the war of words. "I know your real motive. You're in this more for those kidnapped Ghouls than for securing the Brotherhood of Steel's position in the Commonwealth. I never should have allowed your outside affiliations, and I won't throw the majority of my forces against a raider upsurge when the Institute remains the real threat, and especially not on the _word_ of a raider. Have you lost your sense?"

Ilya armed her glare even further. "My motive is to kill every damn thing that deserves it out here. It's the only motive I have left. You spoke with Clay-Crawler yourself, he's not like the raiders from the Commonwealth. He was born out in that hell, raised fighting against those Dark Bloods, and he knows exactly how they operate. What better source do you want?"

"One that wouldn't have you charge in out of bloodlust," Maxson parried, his tone still controlled though edged in heat. "I get it, Harper. You've been through a lot, and lost more, but so have many others in this world. I won't cater to your death wish."

Danse made an attempt. "Elder, may I—"

"No, Danse, you may not."

Bristling, Ilya felt rage smouldering inside her and struggled to keep it on a leash. Crossing her arms, she challenged the elder through gritted teeth. "I don't intend to go in there with a death wish. I intend to go in there to kill. Every. Last. One of them. In case you haven't heard, I'm good at it. Damn good at it. Those feral fucks will be meat and ashes when I'm done with them."

Maxson's jaw pulsed beneath his beard as he crossed his arms to match hers, slowly, like he was calculating her capabilities. "Now I see it, what everyone here sees when I'm not around. The Wastelander in you, the mercenary out for blood, the killer... the feral." He said it so darkly, so ominously, yet so reflectively, that Ilya couldn't tell whether he was disgusted or impressed. "It didn't take long for this world to sink its teeth in and drag you from your military roots, did it?"

"War back then was no less cruel than it is today, it was just better at disguising itself in science and technology. What makes you think it was this world that fucked me up?"

Maxson held her eye in the standoff. "Because if you came from a darker place, you wouldn't concern yourself so much with protecting everything out there that needs it. This world doesn't breed that kind of heart. It kills it. I've seen it happen too many times, and so it's my duty to prevent such weakness in the Brotherhood. If you want to survive out here, you must know your limits, and you must discipline yourself."

Telling her she was weak because of her humanity set her core burning. "Fuck you. So you were just bullshitting when you said you'd help the Minutemen fight them. You sent me out into that fuckscape without any intention to make good on your word."

"Remember your place, Knight," came Maxson's scold through clenched teeth. His own rage was now visibly being held in check by just as short a leash. "I gave you no such word. I sent you out there to secure the means to effectively gain the upper hand against these raiders. Developing a counter-defence takes time, and rushing in against the enemy can only result in failure." His eyes shot up to Danse standing helplessly behind the woman. "I'm disappointed that you would allow such reckless behaviour in your charge, Paladin."

"She has a will of her own, Elder," Danse answered in honest guilt. "But if given your blessing, I would gladly accompany her in an assault on the quarry."

"Of course you would," Maxson sighed under his breath, but his glare remained true. "I've made my decision. Your Ghouls will just have to wait, I won't commit our resources in this so early."

Danse had been right. Of course Maxson wouldn't go through with it. Ghouls weren't people to him. As far as he was concerned, they were just the same as the ferals. They weren't human, so they couldn't be trusted, and they weren't worth his time. And even if there were humans down there instead of Ghouls, Maxson wouldn't think twice about leaving them to rot. He didn't care about the Commonwealth, he cared only about gaining order under the Brotherhood's rule, no matter the cost. And Danse was no different. It was a side of the Brotherhood that she hated.

Ilya crunched her teeth together and put her foot down. "I'm going in there, Maxson, with or without your help. You can't stop me."

She had never disrespected him so much as to call him by name, bald of any title, and it was clear in his face that it ruffled his feathers. "In fact, I can," Maxson bit back, his eyes seeming to deepen a shade in the threat. "I can have Danse detain you until you decide to see sense." He cast the paladin behind her an expectant eye, causing a chill to pool in Ilya's stomach at the possibility of her paladin turning on her.

There was a prolonged silence.

"Paladin Danse, in case I didn't make myself clear, I want you to take Knight Harper to the holding cells at once," Maxson ground out.

Ilya felt utterly vulnerable while the presence behind her apologized to his elder and then shifted aimlessly on the spot, the railing under her feet vibrating under his weight. Fuck. She hadn't seen this one coming at all. This wasn't fair on Danse. She had caused this, put him in this situation with her impulsive way. She had already undermined him by bulldozing Maxson for aid.

"There's no need," she intervened before Danse could pick a side, forcing her tone to cool down. "I know a pointless fight when I see one." With that, she threw a barbed, "Elder," before whirling and pushing past Danse's mass to descend for the mess hall below. No doubt half the deck had heard their squabble, so she set a brisk pace through the halls, halting only briefly to look in on Clay-Crawler in the infirmary as Cade kept him monitored. The raider snapped his eyes to her and stared unblinkingly before giving her the creepiest smile she had seen in a long time.

"Harper, hey!" It was Knight Lynch, the soldier who had fought alongside her in Danse's rescue. She came trotting toward her, a bright smile plastered across her ebony features. Ilya hadn't been able to determine her skin colour previously because of the dirt and oil from the Rad Lands. "I meant to find you at the rendezvous point, but we got the all-clear to head back to the Prydwen before I got the chance."

Ilya couldn't deal with this. Not now. Without any acknowledgement, she fled the deck in rigid stride, climbing down to the Command Deck and heading through to the foredeck beneath Maxson's observatory perch, slamming the bulkhead behind her, because it felt good.

The fresh air did nothing for her. At this point, her skin was aflame, her heart was hammering at her ribcage, and her breath was rushing through her nostrils in rapid gales. She needed Jet. NOW.

Hands trembling, Ilya ransacked her pack for the precious inhaler, wrapping her fingers around it with a tight grip that would defy any error of dropping it. She dumped her pack, whined aloud as she fumbled bringing it to her mouth, and released the contents into her airways with that pleasurable hiss. The world slowed, easing the tumult in her head and carrying her on pillows toward the promised bliss. She sighed and closed her eyes, feeling herself slowly drift down to the metal floor and rest her weight against the wall, head falling back. This was ecstasy. This was life. This was her moment in it all, her time for nothing else but herself. She just wanted this to last forever, for her life to consist only of the Jet.

The painful memories of Nate and Shaun were blown away on a soft breeze, like it had all happened in another life, one that was so distant it didn't matter anymore. The horror of the war went with them, no more did she dwell on all those people lost while she had narrowly escaped underground. The soldiers and military officials who had put their lives on the line to direct the civilians to safety, her neighbours, her friends, her parents and relatives. They had died in another life. The rage at Kellogg, gone. At the Institute, gone. At Maxson and his Brotherhood of Steel, gone. She was just free. Not a widow, not a mother, not a soldier, not a sole survivor. Just free.

The bulkhead creaked in her peripheral awareness, and she turned her head through the drift to see Danse standing over her. He spoke her name in a voice that was too slow, too deep, too demented, and she only observed as his head cocked to the side and his frown took place.

Then it all snapped back as the Jet died. The sorrow, the rage, the memories. Ilya blinked and frowned back at Danse, then remembered herself and climbed back to her feet.

"What are you doing back here?" Danse questioned as she retrieved her pack from the floor.

"Did Maxson tell you to follow me?" she dodged.

"No," he responded defensively. "I came to check on you. Besides, I doubt he trusts me after my previous hesitance. I bumped into Lynch when I came after you, and she told me you stormed off without a word."

Ilya sighed out hot air and shook her head, gazing off out to the Commonwealth below. "Fuck Maxson," she snarled.

Danse regarded her in pity, and she hated it. "He has his reasons, one of which I'm convinced of is trying to keep you safe. He has more compassion than he lets on."

She scoffed. "I doubt he's capable of compassion. He's a self-righteous, narrow-minded piece of shit. He had me believe we were meeting halfway. But he fucking played me. I shouldn't have trusted him."

Danse went to say something, then stopped himself and sighed, looking perturbed and torn. She had fully expected him to reprimand her for speaking ill of his elder, and she knew he was struggling not to.

They were both gazing anywhere but at each other when Ilya decided to hustle. "I'm leaving," she stated bluntly, swinging her pack over her shoulder and grabbing the bulkhead handle.

"Where?"

"I don't know. Anywhere but here." She had made it halfway back across the Command Deck when she heard his heavy footsteps follow.

"I'm coming with you."

She didn't exactly know what to make of that. Whether he was coming along to keep an eye on her for Maxson, or because he simply cared, she wasn't in the right frame of mind to decide.

Dogmeat was sitting patiently beside the steps out to the Flight Deck, and wagged his tail upon seeing the two emerge.

"Come on, buddy," Ilya beckoned with less enthusiasm than he was accustomed to, and Dogmeat instantly sensed the tension, lowering his tail and keeping his prancing to a minimum.

With the paladin present, the vertibird pilot didn't question their clearance for transport. Ilya opted for the Cambridge Police Station. It was the easiest place to set off from whenever she was dismissed from the Prydwen due to the stockpile of supplies and its ideal location in the centre of Boston.

As soon as they set down on the roof, Ilya stomped through the building, gathering ammunition and supplies where she could, dumping a flux sensor in Scribe Haylen's hands,—which she had meant to drop off before transporting to the Institute—outright avoiding Knight Rhys, and pushing through the main door to walk right through the barricades and out into the open. She didn't even check if Danse had kept up with her throughout all that, but she heard Dogmeat's claws tapping against the road just at her heel.

She cracked a beer, downed a hard draught, and eyed the road ahead.

* * *

 **A/N:** It was hard for me to write Maxson in such a negative light in this chapter, since he's one of my favourite characters. I know the game is all about perspective, but it's very easy to put Maxson in the antagonist role. Still, I think he's a badass, and misunderstood, maybe.


	10. Paradise Lost

**Chapter 10: Paradise Lost**

* * *

Ilya walked in no specific direction, she just walked. The memories of the Commonwealth before the fallout would drift over her, a cruel reminiscence of a paradise lost but never forgotten. She relived it every day, in the place deep inside her that she dared not touch nor let go. As long as she remembered, then it all still existed. Nate still existed. She still existed.

Her feet dragged over pristine roads, the white paint down the centre so crisp it reflected the sun. The streets were in perfect order, white picket fences surrounding the ideal homes for the ideal families. The trees swayed in the light breeze, leaves fresh in the summer season, rustling softly to her eardrums. Kids were outside playing in their yards, cheeks full and flush, laughter merry, eyes alight. Shaun would have been there, one day.

Beyond, the grand highways rose along the skyline, magnificent in scope, harbouring the bustle of daily automobile traffic. Freshly painted billboards graced those highways and the sides of towers, advertising an array of splendid services and products.

It was a metropolis at its height, brimming with luxury and refinement.

But beyond all of that, war touched the horizon. It spawned and spread, covering the world in its gloom, creating horrors and destroying the good in man. It fed on the lust for power, for domination, and it bred paranoia until mankind turned on itself and brought the world to its ruin.

But war was not done. It lingered, waiting, festering in the quiet while man stumbled in the wastes of its demise and learned to survive anew. As the skies cleared and life took a stand to try again, war took its place once more, and it smiled, because war never changes.

Ilya stood in place and stared at the face of life now, at how far it had fallen, at how it was dying all around her. She considered her place in it, a woman out of time, a sole survivor, a lone wanderer, a weapon for the people. It was such a small place in the scope of it all, but she still couldn't fill it. Couldn't save those Ghouls. Couldn't save her family. Couldn't save the world.

And then she ran.

She just ran. The road, the dirt, the grass, the rocks. None of it mattered, it was just her path, and in the way. The sun was on the wane, fleeing from her as she tore up the land. Her heart thrashed, bruising in her chest. Her breath wheezed, stinging in her lungs. Her limbs pushed, burning in her muscles. But she powered on, crashing through rivers and clearing outcrops of rock with a furious speed.

Her sprint was fuelled so strongly by a rage at the world that she ignored the familiar voice calling her from behind.

"Harper, slow down!"

Danse had fallen behind long ago, but he had maintained her trail at a distance, it seemed. Even Dogmeat had drifted away from her side, the canine's anatomy not built for endurance like the human anatomy. Ilya continued pushing her body, heaving air in and shoving it out painfully, ascending hills on all fours, pulling at the grass or dead branches for leverage.

"Harper, just stop for a moment!"

She couldn't stop. Couldn't let it all catch up to her. Had to keep going. Keep going. A couple of stingwings darted across her path, altering their flight plan to zero in on her. She didn't stop. Her sidearm was drawn in a fluid motion, and she snapped off multiple rounds, shredding one stingwing in the cascade. The other she rushed right at, ripping out the serrated machete she had taken from the Rad Lands and slashing. The stingwing dodged, but failed in round two as Ilya connected her following slice and brought it out of the air. Her feet picked up their momentum once again.

"God damn it, would you listen to me and stop!" Danse bellowed out in anger.

Ilya stopped. Gorski Cabin was right in front of her, offering a solid wall to heave against. She rested her hands against it and let her head slump while she sucked up air in loud gasps, then began to dry retch as her body processed the shock to its system.

Danse caught up, breathing heavily with footfalls slow in his approach. He leaned a hand on a sturdy tree and took a moment to collect himself, watching her wordlessly while she coughed and growled through her straining.

"What the hell was that?" he finally ripped into her.

Then it all collapsed. The tears, the curses, the thrashing of limbs, all bursting out of her without warning. She sobbed hot fluid as her boot connected with the wall. "Fuck!" Her hands went to cradle her face and the tears, but she tended to the fury first and picked up a nearby slab of wood from the broken porch, smashing it against the cabin with a vicious cry.

"Ilya." She was distantly aware of Danse's voice and his shadow, just standing there, not knowing what to do. But it was too distant, muted for the roar in her blood as she swung again, at the porch this time, breaking off a piece of its wooden structure. Splinters cut into her hands, but she feasted on the pain and struck the porch again, screaming out for more.

"Ilya!"

She released the pain through her vocals and kept smashing, again and again and again, until her palms were shredded and slick with blood. Then she went in to tear at the porch with her bare, bloody hands.

"That's enough!" Huge metal hands seized her wrists from behind and pulled them from their grip on the broken porch railing. She growled like a feral dog and tried to jerk away, fighting against his hold, but it was useless. "Stop it!" Danse demanded as he pinned her back against his chestplate, keeping her arms locked across her chest until she finally broke out into keening wails.

Her legs crumbled beneath her as all her strength seemed to drain out with her tears, but Danse supported her weight against his armour, holding her in place while she sobbed.

"I can't," she wept out, drenched in tears and sorrow. "I can't, Danse. I just can't keep doing this. I can't."

He said nothing, likely lost for words, and he just held her for a long while, until he must have realised she wasn't going to stop any time soon. "Hey," he soothed, and his voice was like rich caramel, caressing her eardrums this close. "It's gonna be alright. Deep breaths."

Gradually, her tension faded and her body sank fully against his armour. She just wanted to sleep, right there in his arms, in his security, and let it all wash away in the slumber. She felt him carefully lower them both until he was on a knee, and she could curl her limbs beneath herself on the ground. He released her then, but one hand didn't leave her, it remained against her arm, as if breaking contact would reduce her to tears once more.

Ilya finally brought herself to face him, vision hazy from the tears that still rimmed her waterline, but clear enough to see his face was pinched with worry.

"Ilya," he rumbled to her, "talk to me."

"Can we just sleep here tonight?" her voice cracked out.

His eyes roamed her first, then he nodded gently. "Sure. I'll keep watch. You just rest." He helped her into the cabin and down onto the mattress that someone had placed in there, pulling over a rug from the floor and gently covering her with it. He waited there as she burrowed into the rug and closed her eyes. She didn't hear him move away for a long, long time.

* * *

 _She was there again. Cold, limp, helpless. Outside the pod, life was a blur, the commotion meshing together fluidly, because she had witnessed it a thousand times before. There, she watched Shaun being torn away from his father. She heard the bullet escape the barrel. She felt it pierce her husband, and with it, she felt him slip away right there, in front of her, within seconds._

 _One moment. One decision. One motion. Kellogg had made it all. He had taken Nate away from her forever. She would never look in his eyes again to see them staring back. Never see him smile at her again. Never hear his voice. Never feel him in her grasp, or feel him touch her tenderly like he once had. Just like that, he was gone. And it hurt so much. Too much. She wanted him back. Damn it, she needed him back. She couldn't keep on going, not without him, not with his memory haunting her every day and night._

 _The pod gave way, and her hands caught her crash to the ground. She drifted through the memory like a ghost, lingering over Nate's body, his face frozen in the rictus of sudden death. The ring slipped into her fingers, and she crushed it inside her fist, vowing to never let go. Shock aided her to leave him there and pursue her son. She made a promise to get him back._

 _That promise carried her through the vault on the flight of grief and revenge. It pushed her out into the Wastes when nothing else would. It drove her to kill, and it forced her to love it._

 _Fury from the blood. Red and rage. Death and war and pain. She thrived on it all, needed it, whispered to it in the dark. And it kept her alive. The Wastes were gone, and she floated in the vacuity of her mind, waiting, whispering, and listening to it whisper back._

 _She was on the wings of paradise, before the war. The world rushed by, glowing and growing, achieving wonders from the human mind and promising the perfect life to all._

 _She was on the wings of war, before the fallout. The world was below her, shouting at her, accusing her. Nations were falling, people were running, soldiers were dying. She was down there, fighting, killing, dying. She hated it back then, dreaded every moment her rifle was in her hands, regretted every projectile that she freed, mourned every life she took._

 _Soldiers, power-armoured units, combat robots, artillery strikes, tanks, gunships and fighter jets, all gave way to raiders, mutated creatures, super mutants, synths, a deathclaw hunting her down, the Dark Bloods ravaging her limb from limb, a specimen suffocating her and crawling inside her head._

* * *

One minute, it was deathly quiet, the night seeming to drag on longer than usual, the next minute, his heart was in his throat. The screaming sent Danse bolting back for the cabin from the surrounding woods. Damn it. He had been so close, how could something have slipped past him into the cabin without him noticing? If she was hurt...

He stampeded his way through what was left of the front porch and smashed in the side of the doorframe without any consideration to normal combat procedure, laser rifle at the ready and eyes wild for battle, only to find Ilya sitting up on the mattress, aiming her pistol at him with feverish hands. She instantly dropped the weapon and gave a grating exhale, before running a hand over her tear-soaked face.

"Shit. Sorry. Just a dream," she managed.

"Sounded more like a nightmare," he said to cover his panic, glancing back at the mess he had made before slinging his rifle. Dogmeat was right at Ilya's side, lying on his stomach and staring at her with anxious eyes. Danse took the chance to examine her closely while she had her face hidden in her knees. She was doing worse than he feared. "Are you... alright?" He was aware how much of a stupid question it was.

"Yeah, I'll be okay," she lied through a sniff, tucking unruly strands of hair behind her ears and dashing away tears with her uniform sleeve. That motion drew his eyes to her hands, still bloody from the splinters she had given herself earlier. Such fury.

He stood prone and cracked open his power armour, stepping down and coming around from behind it, careful not to aggravate his healing rib. "Let's take care of those hands." Ilya just looked up at him with thankful eyes as he approached with the lantern from the corner, hovering her hands out for him to see in the dim light. He knelt and looked them over, then peeked up at her face quickly. She looked like hell, haggard and gaunt, with eyes that were deeply haunted, not to mention bloodshot. It was a miracle she could still operate so efficiently. Well, until tonight.

Danse wanted to broach the subject of her health, but had no idea how to do such a thing without coming off as her commanding officer. He hadn't the first clue how to comfort someone in so much distress, but he knew he had to try. It was clear that Ilya needed an intervention. If he didn't do something, she would just keep going to her death. And that prospect shook him to his core.

"Would it help to talk about it?" he began quietly. He carefully took one of her hands in his to find any wood shards still in the wounds. The contact with her soft skin made something inside him soften just as much. He had never touched her bare hands before.

Ilya alternated between watching him, and looking at her hand in his. "I... I don't even know where to start," she murmured.

Good. She wasn't opposed to the idea. "Well, what's the first thing you remember?"

Her eyes dropped, and she remained like that for so long that he thought she wouldn't say anything more. "Shaun, being taken from Nate. The gunshot." He watched as her brow twitched and her mouth quivered. "It's always the same. It never stops."

He knew loss all too well, from Cutler, to Paladin Krieg, to his brothers and sisters in battle, but comparing that to losing a spouse and child would be insensitive. "Have you tried speaking to someone about it? Knight-Captain Cade, or the doctor in Diamond City?"

Ilya shook her head, a thin smile playing on her lips. "So they can dope me up on chems and tell me to take it easy?"

Danse had to grunt in agreement at that. He had gone to Scribe Haylen for a fix on his sleeping troubles and constant headaches after losing his squad back when they were holed up at the police station. She had recommended a similar treatment; bed rest, which he had declined.

"How often are these nightmares occurring?" he queried while pushing out a sliver of wood from her palm, just as gently as his words.

"Every time I sleep. Some are more vivid than others." She slinked more hair behind her ear as wisps fell free. "The sound of that gun... it's always the worst. It won't let me forget." He, too, remembered vividly the sound of his rifle taking the life of the monster Cutler had become. "God, I miss Nate," Ilya finished with a glitter to her swollen eyes.

Danse despised the twinge of jealously that struck his gut, then. He had no right to it. It surprised him, too, though. He wasn't prepared for his attraction to Ilya to develop any further than that. Did that small reaction in him prove that it had? Whatever it meant, it didn't matter, it was inappropriate and against regulations. He blinked to clear his head and focus on pushing out the last splinter from beneath Ilya's skin. "I can't imagine what you're feeling, Harper." He caught her gaze as her eyes flicked up to his. "But what you've accomplished out here, despite what you've lost, is extraordinary. _You_ are extraordinary." Beneath the layer of illness and anguish, he witnessed a brief glimpse of what she might have been like before the Great War, when her life was still whole.

"I had an extraordinary teacher." Her eyes smiled more than her lips, and he wasn't sure what that meant. He found himself lost in her smiling eyes, then, and his hands on hers fell still. She seemed to drink in the moment as much as him, because her following words took their time to be spoken. "I don't think I would have made it this far without you."

"I'm fairly confident you would have been just fine without me stomping around after you," Danse quipped, beginning to wrap her hands in bandage cloth. "I didn't give you the honoured rank of Crackshot Knight for no reason, you know?"

Instead of a return quip like he would have expected from her, Ilya sheltered her eyes beneath her lashes, staring at her knees. "I don't just mean in combat, Danse."

 _Oh..._ Danse fumbled for words. "Ilya, I... I had no idea things had gotten that unbearable for you." She kept her eyes down, and gave a nonchalant shrug, like it was no big deal. He realised he was still holding her hands despite having finished dressing them, and carefully gave them back to her. He thought he saw a flicker of disappointment cross her features before she examined his work, and wondered if he should have kept them in his hold.

"Thanks," she indicated her hands, then added, "and for having my back all this time."

"You're welcome," he said softly, a little too softly, but Ilya didn't seem to notice, still staring at her palms. He decided to take a leap. "I'll always have your back, even in the worst of times. I promise."

That drew her eye again, her sapphires sparking at him in the light of the lantern. He loved her sapphires, he could stare into them all night and familiarise himself with every wavelength of blue they hid, from the pale flares to the oceans of depth. But the light in her at his words quickly diminished, traded in for a hollow stare at her hands again. "I want to tell you about Shaun," she whispered.

Her son. The Institute. Was she finally ready to tell him what happened? He had read her report on the Institute shortly after arriving back aboard the Prydwen, but there had been no mention in it of her son. Danse bit back his questions and waited patiently. She would tell him what she wanted to tell him.

Ilya swallowed and her jaw-line tensed. "He's alive," her voice carried dully to his ears, breathing a cold air across the warmth of the cabin. Danse knew there was more to it, and that it wasn't good, but he waited, still. Her features creased with suppressed emotion. "And he's the Director of the Institute."

Alright. That was a bit of a hit to the gut, but he could handle this. _Christ!_ Really? How is that even possible? "The Director?" he repeated. "Who you listed as 'Father' in your report? But, Shaun is still just a child."

She licked dry lips and nodded to his confusion. "I was in the pod longer than I thought. Sixty years longer... Shaun is," she pressed her lips into a stern line in an effort to keep control of herself, "he's an old man, now. He was the one who thawed me out. Wanted to see if I could find him. And I did." That lip she was trying to bite down on began to quiver. "And he's not my Shaun anymore."

The tears streamed down her cheeks, and she lowered her head again to hide her face. "I'm sorry," she squeaked.

"There's no need," Danse lulled, hesitatingly reaching a hand out to place against her shoulder. It shuddered with sobs beneath his hand, and Ilya buried her face in her knees once more, threads of hair falling forward and sticking to her wet face. His fingers yearned to tuck them behind her ear. How his fingers had wanted to do that every time her hair swayed in her face. But he didn't.

He did, however, shift himself over to sit next to her, wrap an arm around her shoulders, and gently pull her into him until she was fully leaning her weight against him. She was stiff at first, but she quickly melded against him, her tears catching on his uniform. It felt wrong but right simultaneously. Wrong because he was crossing a line, he was her direct commanding officer and he was getting too close, too personal, too attached. But right because... it was Ilya.

After she quieted, she didn't move, she just remained against his chest, her breath flowing in a calm rhythm. He wondered if she had fallen asleep, and then admitted to himself that he wouldn't mind holding her like that through the remainder of the night. But just as that thought occurred, she shifted, gently pressed her lips to his cheek, thanked him, and settled back down beneath the rug. Just like Haylen had.

This time, Danse stayed right there, watching over her until the sun graced the horizon.

* * *

 **A/N:** More character-driven and less plot-driven with this chapter. Not really sure what people prefer, but I hope all enjoyed nonetheless! I wanted to delve deeper into Ilya's mental decline and really flesh out her instability, setting things up more for future events. And Danse, well he's a very complex character in my eyes so I always have to tread carefully in his perspective, but I love how the writers at Bethesda wrote his dynamics, he can always surprise me with some of the things he comes out with, and I have a lot of fun exploring him.

I'm sorry if the romance aspect is too slow burning for some people, but I wanted to explore both of their individualities before bringing them together.

Once again, thanks for reading and supporting, it means the world to me :)


	11. Home Sweet Home, Never Trip Alone

**Chapter 11: Home Sweet Home, Never Trip Alone**

* * *

Sunlight slanted in through the cabin wall, prying open Ilya's eyelids. The warmth on her face was invited, but the volume of light in her eyes throbbed right into her brain. Slowly, she lifted herself up on an elbow and peered around. Dogmeat was absent, and so was Danse. Probably on patrol or taking a piss. Both things could apply to either of them.

Pushing herself up fully, Ilya was reminded of the many cuts on her hands. She lifted them before her eyes to inspect the field dressings Danse had given her, and she remembered the feel of his hands on hers. Hands that were firm and calloused from years of use and experience, but so very gentle. That simple skin-on-skin contact had set her insides blooming, and when he had pulled her into him to comfort her, it was something she had never expected him to do. She recalled flirtatiously asking him once if he would hold her if she ever needed it, like he had with Haylen. Remembering the look on his face and how he had stumbled over his words made a grin sneak up on her.

Danse snuck up on her just then, appearing in the doorway in power armour with his rifle casually in hand. "Ah, good to see some rest has done you well," he greeted with a pleased smile. He looked a little tired himself, however, with darkness hazing around his eyes. Ilya quickly wondered how often he had come in to check on her while she slept. "How are you feeling?" he added after she returned his smile.

"Better. Thanks... for last night."

His smile stayed in place, but his face softened a notch, along with his voice. "I'm glad I could be of some help."

There was a slight silence, but Dogmeat quickly shattered it by barging in through Danse's legs and scampering over to Ilya with ears back and tail wiggling excitedly. She greeted him in her usual way, let him sniff her wounded hands, and then watched in surprise as he darted back over to Danse and sat right at his feet as if it was nothing new.

Danse made a grumbling sound. "I think there's something wrong with Dogmeat. He insists on following me everywhere I go. It's becoming _quite_ irritating."

Ilya considered his almost child-like complaint, the complete look of seriousness on his face, and then the all-too-perfect picture of him standing there with a scowl as Dogmeat sat happily at his feet. She snorted out her laughter.

Danse took on a look of dismay. "Why are you laughing? This behaviour could mean he doesn't trust me with your safety. He's liable to turn aggressive at any moment."

"Danse," Ilya quieted him with her hand, still laughing softly. "It's not because he doesn't trust you. You saved his life out in the Rad Lands. I'm sorry to say that he's going to be eternally grateful."

The man's thick eyebrows ascended in the revelation, and slowly, he looked down at the canine, who was now looking back up at him with his tongue lolling out to one side. His tail gave a slight wiggle at the eye contact.

Ilya mashed her lips together to suppress further laughter. This was too perfect. Danse had always had reservations about Dogmeat tagging along on their adventures, but now he would be forced to deal with the canine on a more personal level. The two of them together like that was the most adorable thing she had seen since... since... Nate and Shaun had learned to laugh together...

She felt the sudden dip in her mood like a weight in her chest. Were Danse and Dogmeat subconsciously her replacements for her husband and son? Was she _that_ messed up that she was finding excuses to cling to any resemblance of her past?

Danse must have noticed her change in demeanour. "Is everything alright?"

She caught her breath deeply and shoved off the drag on her mood, forcing a smile to reassure him. "Yeah." She worked herself out from under the rug, grabbing for her pack beside the mattress. "Aside from being starving. Have you eaten?"

Danse shrugged, still standing idly in the doorway. "A little, from what I grabbed at the police station."

"I have some InstaMash in here that I grabbed for both of us. The rest are gifts for the others. I forgot to hand them out before I left for the Prydwen. Blamco Mac and Cheese, for Deacon. A few packets of Bubblegum for Piper..." She dug deeper into her pack, shoving aside the boxes of ammunition. "Fancy Lads for Preston, Yum Yum Deviled Eggs for both Hancock and Cait, some Sugar Bombs for MacCready's sweet-tooth," she chuckled at that. "I got this hat for Codsworth, I think it would suit him." Holding up a bowler style hat for him to see, Danse only nodded and continued to watch as she dived back inside her pack. "Umm... let's see. Nick had been looking for a new tie ever since his was torn off by a raider one time when we walked into an ambush, so I found a pristine one in the Institute for him. Strong, I got him the biggest chunk of Brahmin meat I could find at Choice Chops." She stopped to toss a slab of raw Brahmin meat to Dogmeat, who pounced on it immediately and then trotted outside with it. "That's Dogmeats... And for Curie... I wasn't sure what to get her, but I found this dress on sale at that clothing store in Diamond City, and thought maybe she'd like it. I dunno," she scoffed at herself and looked to Danse for his opinion, then realised he looked a little out of his depth. Ilya cleared her throat, and held out a box of Dandy Boy Apples. "I, uh, got this for you."

He stared at it blankly for a moment. "How... how did you know that was my favourite pre-war food?"

Ilya grinned widely. "You kidding? It's the first thing you always go for whenever we stay on the Prydwen."

A slight flush crept up his cheeks, and he shrugged again in an attempt to own his embarrassment. "Well, they do say that an apple a day keeps the radiation poisoning away..."

"Exactly," she continued her grin and jiggled the box at him, "so, here you go, Dandy Boy."

He chuckled helplessly then, before stepping in to take the box from her, gesturing with it in gratitude. "Thank you."

"No problem." For a flash of a moment, Ilya pictured him on a billboard, shirtless with a fresh apple in hand, quoting about an apple a day.

"What's yours?"

"Hmm?" she looked back at him from her packet of InstaMash. He was trying to figure out how to open the box with his giant metal hands.

"Your favourite pre-war food."

She thought on that. Would he even know what chocolate was? She had barely seen much of it out in the Commonwealth, aside from a few bars that were so melted and shrivelled inside the wrappers that she hadn't dared to try them. "Does chocolate count?"

Danse gave her a knowing look and nodded. "I have heard of it. Never tried it, however. People seem to be fond of hoarding whatever they can find of it, and not too fond of sharing. Especially back in the Capital Wasteland." He seemed to be lost in a certain memory as he bit into his first caramelised apple, and Ilya could only wonder where he was.

After washing down some dry mashed potatoes with water, she stood and gestured to the mattress. "You should catch a few hours sleep. I'll take watch."

But he held his last apple between his teeth while he reached for his rifle from against the doorframe. "No need," he said after taking the apple in his free hand on the grip of the stock. "We're close to Sanctuary. I'll catch up on sleep once we're there." He had already turned and was stepping through the broken porch before she could make any protests.

* * *

During most of the hike back to Sanctuary, Dogmeat followed tightly on Danse's heels, occasionally darting off to investigate a scent, but always latching back onto his new pack member with unrelenting exuberance. Danse kept the grumblings to a minimum, but he did mention more than once that having Dogmeat so close to him was 'tactically inefficient' and was 'severely testing his temperance to no end.' Ilya knew it irked him to have to worry about trampling on the canine or if he got in the way during a firefight, but she also found the whole situation absolutely hilarious. She did, however, make it an objective to keep from further irritating the already-irritable man.

The trio returned to the homely settlement unscathed, and Ilya led her companions right into its centre, where most people gathered on a lazy day. She breathed in the calm atmosphere and sighed out tension she wasn't aware she was carrying, watching the farmers cultivate the land and the traders laugh with their customers. Over by the big tree in the roundabout were Nick, Piper, Curie, and Preston, hanging around the outdoor seats they had set up. Piper looked like she had them all enwrapped in a story she was telling with animated enthusiasm, and Preston was giggling along while the two synths just stood there listening with amused smiles. It was always so peaceful here. She was glad to be home.

The thunder of Danse's approach drew her attention. "I'm going to catch some shut-eye," he stated, eyes narrowed on something in the distance behind her before they settled back on her with sudden intensity. "If you need anything at all, you know where to find me." With that, he lumbered off to one of the old patched-up houses they used for a barracks. Dogmeat appeared torn by the separation of his pack, but ultimately decided to stay with Ilya.

Ilya wondered on the intensity in Danse's eyes, and the underlining of his words. He wanted her to come to him if she needed to talk, and by that he meant _talk_. The simple gesture caused a warmth to curl around her heart. Turning, she then understood his hasty retreat. Deacon and MacCready were watching her from the bench in the outdoor bar they had set up, a beer in their hands each. Once they saw they had caught her eye, they both approached with loose strides and welcoming smiles.

"We were just talking about you," Deacon opened the exchange before handing her a beer, a hint of sly intent beneath his sunglasses.

"Oh really?" Ilya replied with goading suspicion, cracking open the bottle.

"Yeah. MacCready here was giving me _all_ the details on his dirty dreams of you while you were away."

"What?" MacCready snorted incredulously from behind him.

Deacon paid him no mind. "You should really hear it for yourself. Some of it is actually quite nasty."

"Bull," MacCready dismissed before turning to Ilya. "That's a load of bull, don't listen to him. I would never—I mean, not that you're not—argh! Damn you, Deacon."

Ilya shook her head and chuckled at their boyish antics. Deacon really loved to cause uncomfortable situations. "Home sweet home. I missed you guys."

"We missed you more," Deacon chanted. "So, spill, how did things go with the Brotherhood? You were away longer than we expected for just some negotiations."

"Yeah, about that..." Ilya trailed off. "Things with those raiders are bigger than we first thought. You think you could round the crew up later tonight, maybe after dinner, for a briefing of sorts? There's a lot to go over, and I want everyone's input on this."

"Sounds kinda serious," MacCready said with a worried frown. "We'll get Codsworth onto it. I'm sure he won't mind the hassle."

Ilya smiled thankfully before tugging at her pack. "I also got a few things for everyone. These are for you two. No occasion, just felt like it." She handed MacCready his Sugar Bombs, and Deacon his Blamco Mac and Cheese, gaining a wash of pleasure from their looks of joy. They both thanked her. MacCready tucked into his cereal box right then and there.

"Damn, it's been too long since I had these," he exclaimed with a mouthful. "Takes me back to when I was a kid. Now I know why it's so good to have friends. The perks."

"The Sugar Bomb Perk. Free, lifelong supply, for all your diabetes-seeking needs," Ilya played along, chuckling at him in-between a sip of beer.

"Hell yes, that's what I'm talking about!"

She swung her pack back over her shoulder. "Enjoy. I need to speak with Hancock. You guys know where he is?"

Deacon hummed in thought. "Last I saw, he was chain smoking with Cait and some of the settlers down by the river near the bridge."

"Thanks. I'll catch you later."

As she headed off in search of Hancock, Deacon called after her. "Oh, hey, your breakfast is still in your shack, just so you know..."

She waved back her acknowledgement, and bit her lip in guilt. He had made her breakfast that morning before she left for the Prydwen, and she had completely forgotten. Oops.

* * *

Sure enough, Ilya found Hancock sitting leisurely on some rocks, a feather of smoke drifting up from the cigarette between his gnarled fingers. Cait was beside him, along with some of the settlers who took on guard duties. She only noticed once coming nearer that they were all watching Strong in the distance, racing through the shallow waters after something out of sight, his sledgehammer held high in his wrath. At least he had found a way to entertain himself. She approached from their rear.

"Slacking off, I see."

They all turned in surprise, and both Hancock and Cait vocalised their greetings simultaneously.

"Hey, you," Hancock applied smoothly.

"Shite. Finally!" Cait was much louder, and more enthusiastic as she jumped up to meet Ilya at level height. "This place has been a snore while you were gone. Not even a feral come to play. What took ya so long?"

Ilya summoned her most charismatic smile. "Murder and mayhem. The usual. There's going to be a crew meeting later tonight. You'll get the details then."

"Good," Cait puffed restlessly. "I'm gettin' tired of sittin' around here with me thumb up me arse."

Hancock blew the last of his smoke and stubbed his cigarette on a rock, hauling himself up to join them. "This meeting business sounds heavy. Does this mean we're a go for getting those Ghouls outta the quarry?

"Things with the Brotherhood didn't go down well," Ilya supplied him, feeling her anger frothing beneath her surface. "So we have some decisions to make about moving forward from here. I want everyone's opinions."

"Well, whatever you decide, I'll have your back," Hancock assured with a glint to his black eyes. "Those raiders will wish we were a nightmare."

Cait shared his eagerness. "Yeah, same here. It's been too long since I picked a fight."

Ilya had hardly doubted either of them in this. In fact, she was almost certain that everyone would be willing to join the assault on the quarry. That was, if she could convince the Minutemen. Still, hearing it from them with such unwavering loyalty gave her the mettle she would need to push ahead.

"I never doubted it," she rewarded them with an authentic smile. She felt that her smiles were growing more and more forced with each passing day, and with each one that could muster itself without her dredging it out, came a tiny morsel of her former self.

Hancock was fishing out another cigarette from a pack. "Come on. Take a load off and join us. You look like you could use some R&R."

"Actually," Ilya uttered, "I wanted to talk with you, Hancock. Privately."

The flesh on his face lifted with intrigue. "Alright, then. Let's go somewhere secluded, shall we?" He made it sound more sinister than he needed to, which left Cait watching after them with an interested cast to her eyes.

Ilya led him into the backyard of one of the houses, where she stopped and leaned up against the back wall, kneading her hands together in her reluctance to start.

"You got something that needs doing?" Hancock started for her, eyeing her with dark curiosity. "Just give me the word and I'm all over it."

"No, nothing like that," she let him down easy, then stalled by scowling over at the grass.

The Ghoul gauged her thoughtfully, then changed tactics by moving to lean against the wall alongside her. "I gotta say, you're not looking too good, sister. A little pick-me-up could help with that."

That was the perfect entrance she needed. "You read my mind, I just didn't know how to ask without sounding like a scavver. Hit me up."

His skin stretched in a wicked grin. "Gotten a taste, have we, sister?"

"Me and Jet go deep. Full budding soulmates," Ilya jested, matching his grin. It was half-true, at least. Just not the full story.

"Glad to have you on the wild side."

Following Hancock to where he hid his stash, Ilya felt a phantom of regret brewing in her core. Each step she took was a war she fought with herself, but it was a losing war, she knew. Her mind was racing to rationalise her decision. She needed the Jet. She would be no good without it. If she wanted to help those Ghouls and cripple the Dark Bloods and their uprising in the Commonwealth, then she needed to be at the top of her game.

Hancock stopped behind another old house, where the hatch to the bunker was. "Folks don't come back here often, so I thought it would be the perfect place to keep my stash. Not that I'm ashamed, myself. But not everyone appreciates being out in the open for all eyes to see when I'm dealing out a few chems here and there."

"You supply some of the settlers here?" Ilya queried in surprise. The last thing they needed was their guards high and twitchy on duty.

Hancock took on a look of innocence. "Well, who am I to turn down someone seeking a trip or few?" He read her arched brow and was quick to extend. "Don't worry, I haven't turned the entire place, just a select few."

Ilya sighed and eased off. She wasn't looking to be a hypocrite. Hancock crouched and dug out a chem box from amongst the bushes, keying the lock and flipping the lid to present an assortment of goodies. "Ride of choice, sister?"

"Jet," she heard herself say without hesitation.

"The cult classic," Hancock commented with an approving nod. He handed her several inhalers. "Now remember to go easy on it, unless you wanna end up shootin' things that aren't there. Been there, done that. Wouldn't recommend it."

She grabbed the pouch where she kept her bottle caps. "How much?"

"For you? On the house. We're partners in crime. What's mine is yours. Besides, if it wasn't for you, Bobbi No-Nose might well have nabbed my entire supply. Then I wouldn't have anything to give you."

Ilya sighed, but this time in relieved appreciation. "Thanks, Hancock."

"What would you do without me?" He tossed her a wink, then held up his own Jet inhaler and grew a charming smile. "Never trip alone."

* * *

The world decelerated in that delicious familiarity, creating intervals of highs that promised to bring a faster pace to the bliss. Within an hour, Hancock's charisma had loosened Ilya's tension and soon after, utterly obliterated any remaining traces of self-loathing she had possessed. They sat together on the roof of the same house—Hancock had led her up a fallen tree log that served as a sturdy path.

"I'll never forget the first time you waltzed into my office as the Silver Shroud," Hancock reminisced loudly after they had finished their second hit of Jet. "Right then, I knew you were crazy, deep down. And I knew I wanted to hitch a ride with you." His leathery finger pointed right at her nose, and Ilya found herself focusing intently on its tip in fascination. "You feel me?" he finished with a wide delay, also focusing intently, but on her nose, for whatever reason.

"I feel you," Ilya agreed wholeheartedly.

His finger wavered around her nose, then he seemed to catch his balance and wagged his finger at her nose more intently. "You," he began, seeming to try to convince her of something. "You have a nose."

"You _don't_ have a nose," she observed in kind.

"Really? Well, that's a fucker, ain't it," he returned, and Ilya couldn't tell if there was sarcasm in there or not, she was too fascinated by his finger.

"Damn," she breathed, eyes narrowing on his finger. "Hancock, your skin is so smooth."

He blinked in consideration, the skin around his eyes pulling down in a frown, and then he drew his finger back and brought it right up in front of his eyes to see for himself. After a moment, he said, "I think you're a little further gone than me, smoothskin."

Ilya just hummed and continued to stare.

"Say something for me, as the Shroud," he then incited, taking advantage.

"Fear not! For the Silver Shroud is out for... JUSTICE! And you," she leaned forward and pointed her own finger at him, right where his nose didn't exist, "Mayor Hancock, have been a bad Ghoul, getting the Shroud high on chems!" He chuckled at her accusation. "But! Justice shall have its rightful way! Fear the vengeance of the Silver Shroud!" She poked at his nasal cavity, and he sneezed on reflex.

"Home five minutes, and already high on chems..."

Both Ilya and Hancock caught their balance at the intruding voice of Deacon. They twisted in all directions, but couldn't locate him.

"Down here, geniuses."

So they both peered down through the broken panelling of the roof to find Deacon inside the house, leaning up against a wall with his arms crossed.

"I didn't even have to activate my sneak mode to find you two," Deacon commented dryly.

"Deacon! You slippery bastard," Hancock greeted in fond rowdiness. "Come up here and join the fun. We were just getting started."

"I'd love to, Hancock, but maybe another time. I _would_ like to steal Ilya away from you, though. If that's cool?"

Hancock's throat produced a grumble that almost sounded feral. "Right now? Is it really that urgent?"

"Oh, it's that urgent. Matter of life and death, actually. Real serious business."

So Hancock allowed it, reluctantly. "Fine, then. Let's get you down from here," he said to Ilya, standing and preparing to help her amble across the roof.

But Ilya had a better idea. "I can just—" she grabbed a firm hold of the steel railing along the roof's structure and lowered herself beneath the panelling. Before Hancock or Deacon could stop her, she swung down and landed softly in the house. "—do that," she finished with a proud grin.

"Monkey," Hancock gibed from above.

"Someone needs to separate you kids before you end up hurting yourselves," Deacon chided playfully, but even through the cloud of bliss, Ilya could tell he was pissed at her.

She tried to ignore it. "What's up?"

But Deacon wasn't playing for long, opting for the stern route. "Other than your toxic blood levels? Ilya, the first thing you do when you get back is get yourself a hit from the shadiest guy here—excluding myself—and go at it for hours. I'm worried. So much for cleaning yourself up."

Ilya sighed loudly in exasperation, licking dry lips and dumping her hands on her hips as if they were a burden. "I've just got back from two days in hell, I think I earned myself some off-duty hours. I'm a grown woman, Deacon. I can look after myself."

"That's just it. You're a grown-ass woman, but you're acting like some wild-child raider, running around getting high and looking for anything to fight, up all through the nights either staring into space or pacing non-stop, mumbling under your breath with that knife in your hand. And yes, I've stalked you before, and I'm still doing it. You creep me the heck out sometimes."

"Deacon, I'm high, I'm not in the mood for this right now..." she moaned.

"Take a look at yourself," he went on, gesturing to her body, "you're wasting away. Sooner or later, someone's gonna jump you and you won't have the strength to fight them off."

"Come on, it's not that bad."

"It _is_ that fucking—" he cut himself off, both hands going to his pompadour wig to press at his hairline. "Look, Ili," he started again, decreasing his tempo. He even used his nickname for her. He really was trying his damnedest to butter her up. "This is all coming from a place of care. Remember how we're friends? Yeah, that whole thing. Well, as a friend, I would really appreciate it if you could slow yourself down, and just, take it easy. How does that sound?"

He was right. Ilya knew it like she knew the back of her hand. But acknowledging that she had a problem would make it all that more real, and force her to deal with it. She didn't have time to deal with it, not now, while things were heating up out there.

She forced her eyes to needle right at his glasses and show him that she had her head on straight. "You don't need to worry, Deacon. I've got this under control. Trust me."

He inhaled deeply and crossed his arms. "Ilya..."

"Do you trust me?" she pressed.

"That's not fair."

Screw it. She smothered a grumble. "I'm going to take a bath." Her shoulder brushed past his on her way outside, where she stumbled right past Codsworth's hovering approach.

"Miss Ilya, how are—" There was a silence as she left him behind. Even Dogmeat was hesitant to follow.

* * *

 **A/N:** The response on the previous chapter really was amazing, from the helpful feedback, to the kind compliments, and the funny comments, they all made me smile or laugh. So thanks, you guys are awesome!

-Had a little too much fun with this one. Wanted to lift the mood after the last chapter, and mess around with some of my other favourite companions. Just something light before things get dark again :P


	12. In This Together

**Chapter 12: In This Together**

* * *

Clay-Crawler was absorbed in his surroundings. The walls were all metal, all bolted, all strong. He never knew so much metal existed. And the lights, they were so bright, hunting him down without the faltering of fire. Strange, alien objects were scattered across benches and other surfaces. He had never been anywhere like this before. All he knew was dust and rock and fire. And blood. Lots of blood.

He observed as scientists fluttered all about him, poking and prodding his extremities, lurking over his head where the creature still clung, barely looking him in the eye. They rarely spoke to him, either. Sometimes they would ask him questions: Can you move this? Can you feel that? Does this hurt? He wanted to be the one asking questions and being answered, but they ignored him when he tried.

At least he wasn't hungry. That was something new to him. Hunger had always been a companion to him. A constant, deep, aching companion. But here, he was fed food he had never encountered before. It was odd. Not bad, just odd. He preferred flesh.

The Boss-Man had come to visit again, the one in the heavy, luxurious coat with the dark, cold gaze. His presence was ominous, eyes evoking a certain foreboding. Clay-Crawler watched him with interest as he approached, meeting his eye briefly.

"Any further progress, Scribe Ketway?" Boss-Man asked evenly, halting at the foot of Clay-Crawler's medical cot, securing his hands behind his back.

Ketway glanced up from his notes with perked eyes. He had obviously missed the elder's entrance. "Elder Maxson, yes indeed, we're just about set to begin the procedure. There are still a fair lot of unknowns, however. We simply don't know what to expect when we remove the specimen. If there are any further questions you would like to ask the subject, I advise you ask them now, in case he doesn't recover."

"Very well." Boss-Man looked upon Clay-Crawler with eyes devoid of emotion. "Are you willing to co-operate if I ask you some more questions, raider?"

Clay-Crawler nodded, engrossed in Boss-Man's thick beard. None of the leaders in the Blood Lands had beards. It was too hot, and there were lice. "Yes. Will answer."

"Good. You've already given us all the intel we would ask from you, but these next few questions will be of a more off-topic nature. However, they are no less vital to our operations going ahead. Do you understand?"

Again, Clay-Crawler nodded. "Yes. Do understand."

Boss-Man wasted no time. "What does The Sight mean to you?"

"The Sight!" Clay-Crawler's attention grew tenfold. "Sight speaks to spirit people. Shows things. Helps all. Leaders, and slaves."

"And who are these spirit people?"

"Meek. Eye Daddy. Meek... nice. Helpful. Eye Daddy... helpful. Not as nice."

Boss-Man's icy eyes sharpened on him, and Clay-Crawler felt his submissive nature bend to his will in response. "You had said that this Sight told you of Knight Harper, that you would find her." When Clay-Crawler frowned at that, Boss-Man provided a terse, "Ilya."

"Ah! Yes! Ilya. The Whisper."

"The Whisper?"

"Yes. The Whisper. Sad eyes. Angry eyes. Meek called her Whisper. The Ilya." He watched as the bearded man frowned at him in suspicion. Did he not like him? But he had answered all of their questions.

"What else did it show you of her?"

"Not show me. Show Meek. Meek tell me."

A strained sigh from The Boss-Man. "What did this Meek tell you of Ilya?"

Clay-Crawler stopped to ponder, thinking back to that time. A long time ago. Many weeks. "Meek told of ritual. Initi—Inition—" he struggled with the word.

"Would that be an initiation ritual?" Boss-Man lent impatiently.

"Yes. Inition ritual. Mine. To take place as fighter. Meek said I wake. See sad eyes. Angry eyes. See Whisper."

"Did Meek tell anyone else about Ilya? Do your leaders know of her?"

He blinked rapidly in thought. "Don't know. Meek told in secret. Gives secret Sight help."

Boss-Man blew out a sigh and pinched at his nose bridge. "Go on."

"Go on?" Clay-Crawler repeated, not sure what was expected of him. That was it. That was all he had.

A muscle in Boss-Man's jaw jumped. "Is there anything else? What else do you know of Ilya?"

He thought some more, harder, not wanting to annoy The Boss-Man. He liked his beard. "Ah! Whisper likes The Dancer. Saw it. In eyes. Soft eyes for Dancer. And, harder to tell, but..." he pursed his lips and then gave a toothy grin to Boss-Man, "... think The Dancer likes Whisper, back."

"I've heard enough," Boss-Man growled, stepping back from the cot and diverting his gaze to the scientist. He seemed unpleased. Why? "Senior Scribe Ketway, you have permission to begin the procedure."

His surroundings picked up in pace, scientists moving around with purpose and their torture devices moving, too. Boss-Man backed out into the corridor. "Boss! Wait!"

He meant the title to be respectful and empowering, but Boss-Man turned with eyes to murder. He went on quickly to save himself a beating. "Sorry! Please. I speak with Whisper? Whisper is here?"

"Why would you speak with her?"

Clay-Crawler cast his eyes down, away from the source of the demand. "Like her..."

But Boss-Man only glared at him before his eyes turned empty of emotion again, and then he turned without a word and marched from the infirmary.

* * *

The downtime, or more hightime, served Ilya well. A sense of renewal coursed through her blood, galvanising her will to drive on. She was going into that quarry. Alone, if she had to.

The sun had arced its way across the hazy skies and was hiding below the horizon, giving the stars permission to pierce the night sky. That was everyone's cue to gather in the centre of the settlement where the main shack was built.

Ilya waited outside the shack, cross-legged on the grass, tending a small campfire and tinkering with her combat knife, cleaning it of dirt and thinking up mods. She had taken a long, _long,_ bath, scrubbing at her hair vigorously, and had made an effort to dress in something fresh, some white long johns with a leather waistband. She looked like she was part of the human race, now, instead of part-Ghoul.

Boots began to crunch on soil, and Ilya looked up to give discreet welcoming glances to the first gatherers. Nick's neon eyes flashed back and he gave a smiling nod. MacCready did much of the same, sauntering in right for her and taking his spot at her flank, then flashing her one of his cheeky grins. He obviously held no embarrassment from earlier in the day with Deacon's bait. Piper was the first to speak.

"This is nice, the whole family together on a night like this. Where's the toasted marshmellows?" She took her place on Ilya's free flank, elbowing her lightly.

"Sorry, I forgot," Ilya returned. "But I do have some surprises for everyone. Well, everyone that hasn't already got theirs."

"Ooh, I love surprises," Piper bobbed beside her.

"Here." Ilya handed her several packets of bubblegum, watching as Piper's smile spread across her cheeks.

"Aw, thanks, Blue," she fussed, fingers working open a wrapper. "My stash was running low since leaving Diamond City."

"She got me Sugar Bombs," MacCready commented from Ilya's opposite shoulder. "We got ourselves quite the scavver, here."

"Treasure hunter sounds better," Piper edited him, in true reporter fashion.

Ilya continued to hand out the rest of the gifts as people arrived and chatted amongst themselves, but one figure caught her eye with special interest. Danse was approaching the campfire, _without_ his power armour. He was clad in casual olive military fatigues, with a refreshed quality and a stride of easy confidence that was his norm, and that she appreciated in a man. Damn, he looked good, his eyes glinting at her and a small smile showing. He really was gorgeous when he smiled. His appearance without the armour was unusual, though, in that he had never presented himself in Sanctuary without it. She knew he was slow to trust, and felt vulnerable without the armour around a few particular individuals here, so this bold move of his was perhaps a statement of willing co-operation. He knew shit was about to hit the fan, and he knew how important teambuilding would be for them to operate at their peak in a raid.

His eyes were firmly fixed on her as he moved in, and Ilya found herself unable to tear her eyes away from his. There was a warmth hidden in those browns, but something else, too. She just couldn't find what. In another bold move, Danse filled a spot right next to Strong, who already looked uncomfortable as it was, trying to find a way to fold his large form on the grass.

The Super Mutant did a double-take of Danse, then bared a hint of teeth. "Metal-man is puny outside of armour! Strong could smash easily."

Danse didn't even spare him a glance, looking into the fire perhaps as a way to ground himself. "Keep telling yourself that, mutant," he snarled in monotone. Strong only snarled back and continued to rip into his slab of Brahmin meat that Ilya had gifted.

Once everyone was gathered around the campfire, Ilya began by getting straight to the point. "So, most of you probably know that the Brotherhood won't be supporting us in the raid. Long story short, Maxson is an ass." Several people nodded, unsurprised. Danse watched her silently through the fire. "Now that that's out of the way, I should probably give you all the lowdown on what exactly happened while I was gone." And so Ilya recited the events, with help from Danse as he briefly went over his mission details in the Rad Lands. Ilya followed with her own mission details, then went over the specimens, Clay-Crawler, and his information on the raiders. The crew took it all in with mixed reactions. Some appeared worried and even intimidated, while others were clearly incensed for a brawl and mentally preparing themselves.

"I hate to be the one to say it, but I understand where your Maxson is coming from," Nick spoke out, careful in his tone. "Charging into that quarry without any kind of protection from these specimens is almost guaranteed to end badly. You sure this Clay-fellow told you all he knew about them?"

Ilya had quickly learned to listen whenever Nick gave out advice. He was about as level-headed as they came. "I never asked him about the specimens. The Brotherhood have probably drained him of everything he has, by now. If he gave them something useful, Maxson didn't share it with me."

"Maxson doesn't sound like the sharing type," Nick commented flatly.

Ilya gave a shrug of agreement, then grew a sheepish look. "He didn't really get the chance to say. We had a... falling out. I'm technically AWOL right now." She passed eyes to Danse on reflex.

"I plan to report back to the Prydwen tomorrow. I'll attempt to ease things, but there's no saying what Maxson's reaction will be." An inkling of his frown lines showed on his forehead. "I would recommend that you report back yourself, but... I think we both know what that may result in." Ilya nodded. She would likely be detained for her insubordination. Holding Danse's gaze, the fire flickering in his eyes, she understood how much of a deal this was for him, to go against the Brotherhood's code in order to protect her. The impact of his loyalty hit her in full force. Yet, she knew his loyalties were still tethered strongly to the Brotherhood. He must be so conflicted right now.

"I just had a light bulb," Deacon cracked the hold of their gaze. Everyone centred their focus on him. He rarely spoke out in serious group discussions, unless to offer witticisms. He tended to fall into the backdrop and quietly observe. "You might not like it, but just hear me out."

"Go ahead." Now with a clear mind, and without the influence of the Jet, Ilya was feeling guilty for the way she had brushed him off, earlier. Despite his confrontational approach, he had only been trying to help her.

Deacon clapped his hands together as he gained the stage. "Well, seeing as 'metal-man' here is heading back to the airship," that kindled a sharp eye from Danse, and Deacon held up his hands in surrender, "sorry. Had to. But with him there, why not use the chance to steal us a friendly raider for the job? Clay-Crawler sounds like just the edge we'll need in the quarry. He might even be grateful enough to actually want to help out."

Danse glowered. "If you're suggesting I would commit larceny against the Brotherhood and deceive my superiors, then you're very mistaken."

"Hey, well, you've already done one of those things to get Ilya here, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch," Deacon shrugged in defence. "Besides, that wasn't what I was suggesting. I was meaning myself."

Ilya brought her nail to her tooth in consideration. "I don't know, Deacon. This is really risky. Even if you could get to Clay-Crawler, he's under tight surveillance. How would you get him out?"

"Deceit and distraction, of course," he grinned. "Don't you worry, I'll think of something."

"Hold up a second," Cait interrupted, peering over at Deacon in suspicion. "Am I missin' somethin', here? What makes Deacon the expert on sneakin' onto that airship?"

There was a silence. Only Danse and Nick knew that Deacon was an agent for the Railroad—Danse, because he had been with Ilya when Doctor Amari told her to find the Railroad to decrypt the courser chip, and Nick, because his line of work must have led him to discovering Deacon somewhere along the way. Deacon had entered Sanctuary on the pretence of being an assassin. It was enough to discourage people from spreading word of his presence, as working as an assassin required keeping under the radar, but it still wasn't the true story. It was the perfect lie.

"Most assassins prefer the quiet approach, Cait," he explained casually. "We get good at the whole espionage deal. Kinda comes with the territory."

She shot him a look that could kill. "I'm not an idiot. Just sayin' that it'll take more than some sneakin' around to pull this thing off. I've spent enough time out with Ilya to know she's damn good at slinkin' her way around, _and_ she has a real way with words. You might have to talk your way out of somethin' and sorry to say but you come off as a bit of a chem-head."

Deacon just laughed, and said nothing more.

Despite Cait's failed analysis of Deacon, she did give voice to something else Ilya was thinking. "If you're doing this, Deacon, then I'm coming with you. No way in hell I'm letting you have free rein on the Prydwen."

"Oh, this is gonna be so much fun," Deacon rejoiced, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

The throat of a deep voice was cleared to draw attention. "I still haven't agreed to this," Danse reminded them. Ilya knew this would really test his loyalties, and prepared her charisma for a tough job.

"Come on, Danse," Deacon tried. "If the Minutemen won't help out, then it's just us, and we'll need Clay for any chance down there."

Danse remained his stubborn self. "I won't betray my own people. I'd have thought you'd know something about that, Deacon." Deacon sighed and shut his mouth, and another silence followed. Those who were in the dark to Deacon's true identity looked on with lost faces.

Ilya decided that Danse would need to be worked on later, in seclusion. She changed the subject. "Speaking of the Minutemen, if my second attempt to persuade them doesn't work, then is everyone up for the raid if it's just us? We'll be greatly outnumbered and outgunned..."

"Geez, you really know how to sell it, Ilya," MacCready mumbled beside her in sarcasm.

"Scared, MacCready?" Hancock taunted from his other side. "Where's the hotshot sharpshooter that helped our girl here clean Goodneighbor's warehouses in one night?"

MacCready huffed. "He's deciding how to spend his last few nights among the living."

"Don't be concerned, Monsieur MacCready. I have plenty of Stimpaks for everyone, and I am very efficient at tending injuries in combat," Curie chimed in naive delight.

Codsworth's limbs seemed to sag in low spirits. "Oh, bugger..."

"Come on, everyone, we're in this together," Preston tried to rally. "If we don't do something about these raiders, every settlement will need our help." To no avail. Everyone moaned at his statement.

Ilya watched and listened as everyone traded thoughts and opinions. This wasn't going well. Assaulting the quarry without backup was a suicide mission, and they all knew it. From the Minutemen's perspective, nothing had changed, and their odds against the raiders were still low. If Preston couldn't convince them, then she doubted she would have any better luck with her reckless reputation. Unless she found a way to up their odds...

Ilya thought back to her time within the Institute. She could forget about asking Shaun for aid, his only interest was securing the Institute's future, and none of that entailed cleaning the Commonwealth and helping the innocent. His method of gaining future control was to wait it out and let everyone either kill each other or just die out. At least until the Gen 3 synths were ready for deployment. But, her son did still provide her some aid.

"Hold up." Standing, Ilya said no more and strode away from the gathering for her personal shack across the road. Everyone watched her with curiosity.

"Ili?" Deacon called.

When she disappeared in the shack without answering, she heard his footfalls across the road coming toward her, and sighed, irritated that he felt the need to spy on her every move as of late. How often had he been a creeper and spied on her in her shack in the nights, anyway? Didn't he respect her privacy? She grabbed what she needed and made back for the door to tell Deacon to calm his tits, when she bumped right into Danse.

Wait, Danse. Not Deacon? Ilya stared as his concern stared right back.

"You alright?" he asked her quietly, below earshot of the others. He must have thought she went off to have another meltdown, after she hadn't answered Deacon's call. Did he really think her that unstable? On second thought, she realised she couldn't blame him. On third thought, she then realised how moved she was that he had come after her like that. He had no more obligation to than anyone else here. But out of everyone, it had been him.

Ilya swallowed and blinked. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Sorry. I came to grab these." In her hands was a bundle of synth relay grenades. "Each one teleports out a small squad of synths to assist in combat. It won't be enough to turn the tide, but it may just be the extra kick we need to convince the Minutemen that we could make a stand."

Danse looked back up at her with that frown knotting his forehead again. "How will they identify friendly from foe?"

She hummed. "I'm guessing they can detect whoever threw the grenade and are programmed to assist, no questions asked. Probably teleported in from stationary ranks designed just for these grenades. They'll probably adapt quickly in a combat situation and figure out who the bad guys are."

He still looked a little apprehensive at the idea of having synths watch their backs, but he nodded approvingly, fire in his eyes. "Alright. It just might be enough to gain the Minutemen's support."

"And if it is," Ilya mounted that tough job slowly, cautiously, "would you consider getting Deacon and I onto the Prydwen?" The set of his shoulders tensed and his disposition instantly fell to uncertainty, but she pushed through before he could turn her down. "I know you don't like it, but you won't have to do anything beyond getting us aboard. We can take care of the rest."

"Ilya," he drawled in doubt, crossing his arms. "You're not making this easy for me."

"I know, and I'm sorry. But we need this, Danse. So many lives are at stake, and Clay-Crawler really could make a difference. I know you believe that every edge in battle counts." He gazed off into the darkness of her shack, thinking or just being stubborn. She tilted her head over to draw his eye. "Please, just think about it?"

Sighing, he caved in, but not pleased about it. "Alright. I'll think about it."

Before he could leave her shack, she stopped him. "And, hey. I don't want you to have to worry so much about me." He explored her features thoughtfully, frown of concern growing present. "Last night was a one-off. I've pulled myself back together... I'm tougher than I look."

"I know you are," he granted her, though she knew he wasn't fully convinced.

She was quick to steer them away from her status. "Anyway, that uniform looks good on you, soldier."

He gave a laugh of irony at her choice of words as he led the way back outside. "That's my line."

* * *

 **A/N:** I've always imagined a scene with all the companions sitting together around a campfire, and wondered what would actually happen. The silly side of me wanted to make this more humorous, but the sensible side decided to keep it real...


	13. Prydwen Heist

**Chapter 13: Prydwen Heist**

* * *

Danse knew this wouldn't end well. He just knew it. So why was he doing this? That was a very good question. He should listen to his rational self more often.

Unfortunately, his rational self was not taking charge for the foreseeable future.

The red signal smoke roiled into the sky, drawing in the vertibird like a predator to blood. The paladin blew out a lengthy breath and glanced around his armour's shoulder at Ilya and Deacon, standing there with ridiculous grins painted on their faces. Deacon had procured quite the collection of Brotherhood paraphernalia in his line of work, and both were aptly disguised as field scribes, complete with headgear and combat goggles to hide their faces. They both gave him the thumbs up. He sighed.

How on earth did Ilya manage to talk him into this?

She had also managed to talk the Minutemen into providing support for the raid, tempting them with those synth relay grenades. With just a handful, they were capable of wreaking some serious havoc when deploying synth units behind enemy lines, and had the potential to get them through a multitude of situations. With the raid now a certainty, he felt compelled to do his part to increase their odds. But it was more than that. Not only was Ilya just very, very persuasive, but she had a powerful pull on him.

The flight to the Prydwen was awkwardly silent, more so than usual. By some stroke of bad luck, Lancer-Knight Duval, who had been under Danse's command during the Rad Land op, just happened to be the pilot to pick them up. If Ilya even spoke a single word, he would recognise her immediately. The two thieves sat in the troop hold while Danse stood with a hand on the overhead support, praying that Duval wouldn't be in a good enough mood to start up small-talk and put them all at risk of discovery.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

God damn it. Danse felt his sweat glands kick into action. "Go ahead."

"Thank you, sir. I just wanted to give you a heads-up, is all," Duval spoke hesitantly. "Our squadron was given orders to keep a vigilant eye for any signs of Knight Harper on the ground, as well as you, sir. Apparently she never reported back to the Prydwen when due, and she was last seen with you at the Cambridge Police Station. I want to make it clear that I'm not accusing you of anything, sir. You're the finest officer I've ever served under, and I don't doubt your allegiance for a second. But I overheard Elder Maxson speaking with Captain Kells, not that I was eavesdropping, sir, but... well, he wasn't exactly quiet..."

Danse tapped his finger impatiently against the metal hull. "Is this going somewhere, Duval?"

"Sorry, sir," the lancer-knight stammered. "I just meant to warn you that the elder sounded... well he sounded like he didn't trust you, sir. I thought you should know what to expect..."

He should have expected this. Considering his choices lately, it was no surprise that Maxson had his suspicions. And his suspicions were valid. Danse shifted his weight nervously. What the hell was he doing? He was willingly assisting in a crime against the Brotherhood, an accessory to the theft of a valuable resource. He was putting his entire career, no, his entire _life_ on the line. If Ilya and Deacon were discovered, everything was over. And Ilya... she would be executed.

Doubts swirled around his head, taunting his nerve, judging his allegiance. Almost against his will, he glanced at Ilya. She was watching him intently, her eyes screened by her goggles, but the set of her features spoke of all her guilt. He averted his gaze. He wouldn't place the blame on her, he was fully capable of making his own choices and responsible for the decisions that had led him to this point, but he knew that ever since she walked into his life, she had changed him. Every day he spent with her was changing him.

He didn't know what to do.

The docking sequence yanked him from his turmoil. The Prydwen awaited. Maxson awaited. Danse stepped onto the railings with aimless intent, letting the undercover scribes slip past him.

Ilya came to a standstill right in front of him, dropping her voice. "Danse?"

"Come on," Deacon ushered in a near whisper ahead of them. "Maxson will be on the warpath, and we really don't wanna be on it when he shows up."

Ilya didn't move a muscle. "Danse, we don't have to go through with this."

He looked down on her, and shook his head. "It's too late for that." She lowered her gaze and nodded in acceptance, regret expressed in a bitten lip.

"Remember your cover story when they ask about me. I split while you slept and left no trace. I don't want you going down for this."

Danse nodded but said nothing, still doubtful, still conflicted.

"Come on!" Deacon was growing impatient, bouncing on his toes.

Ilya gave him one last hard nod of finality, and swiftly followed Deacon off toward the Command Deck entrance to disappear only god-knows-where and do god-knows-what. Danse watched her wistfully until the bulkhead sealed behind her, then stood looking out at the expanse of the Commonwealth. Should he turn them in? Claim responsibility for his actions and face the rightful consequences? It was the right thing to do. He could vouch for Ilya's mental instability and save her an execution in favour of detainment and possible treatment. If he let them go through with this, and the raider was killed in the assault on the quarry, then any further advantage he could have provided the Brotherhood against the raider uprising would be lost. And that would put many of his brothers and sisters at risk.

The bulkhead creaked open and swiftly slammed shut again. Danse looked up at the view of Maxson storming his way, scorn rolling off him. Kells was on his flank, keeping his expression neutral. The paladin mustered his forces and moved to meet his superiors, prepared to explain himself, but Maxson's voice whipped across the distance between them before he could get a chance.

"Harper is MIA, and was last seen with you. Did I not give you strict instructions to keep her in line and have her report back by morning? Or perhaps you let it slide, as you seem to have an increasing tendency to do with her. Explain yourself, Paladin."

The words were so thickly weaved with malice that Danse stopped short in his approach. Duval had been correct, Maxson truly had lost faith in him. But there seemed to be even more to the eyes that were lancing him down. Something... personal.

Danse's following words hung heavy in the air. "Elder, I'm afraid you're not going to like what I have to say..."

* * *

In her ears, blood pounded. Ilya followed Deacon closely through the Prydwen's halls, wondering how he seemed to know exactly where he was going. Each time they passed someone she recognised, her heart clobbered at her chest and she had to swallow a ripple of panic. To add to that, she couldn't stop thinking of Danse, how she had dragged him into this and compromised his position with the Brotherhood. As much as she disagreed with the Brotherhood's ideals on many things, and often wished Danse would be a little more lenient in those same many things, she never wanted to rip it all away from him. The Brotherhood was his life, his everything. She accepted that, and she accepted him for who he was, be that a total racist jerk or a cold, arrogant, hot-headed, diehard motherfucker. It wasn't his fault he was an asshat, the Brotherhood had practically indoctrinated him. But still, it was all he lived for. Taking that away from him would... she hated to think what it would do to him.

Deacon waved her up, and she moved from her casual lean against the wall and meandered over. They ended up below deck which had been designated the recreational area. Luckily, they were alone.

"Okay, this is how it's gonna work," Deacon initiated their little ruse, keeping his voice low. Ilya folded her arms and listened intently. "I wasn't sure whether we'd have Danse along with us, so this is the Danse-free version. Clay knows who you are, and he wanted to help you, right? So, you're up. Wait for the doctor to take a leak, go in there nice and quiet, and when you have him, cough loudly, or sneeze, anything natural, and say 'bless my steel,' so I know. Wait for my signal before bringing him back down here."

"People here don't say that, you know..."

"What, really? Well, they should. But the plan's simple, yeah?"

Too simple. She probed him with her eyes. "Deacon, you better not cause any trouble."

"Me? Never," his throat rattled with mirth. "Just a small distraction to add some excitement to their day. Did you see some of their faces up there? These people could really benefit from it."

Ilya gave him a slanted look and sighed. "What's your signal?"

"Probably a lot of yelling..." He blunted her grumble by shushing. "Just trust me. It's gonna be a walk in the park."

* * *

By some dumb luck, Ilya didn't have to wait long for Cade to take a toilet break. She had only made four passes of the infirmary in her leisurely circuit around the deck before spotting him heading off after the restrooms.

Outwardly casual, she strolled into the infirmary feigning a stomach ache, and quickly located the raider on a cot, wrists and ankles restrained to the mattress. He looked to be asleep, and the creature was no longer fused to his scalp.

Rushing in, Ilya skimmed her eyes over him quickly. There were fresh gashes along his scalp, travelling up to his crown as if something had clawed in and been ripped away. Removing the specimen must have turned into a violent ordeal. She shook him by the shoulder. "Clay-Crawler? Wake up." He stirred slightly, moaning and grimacing at the disturbance, but not opening his eyes. She shook him again, harder. "Come on. Wake up, Clay-Crawler!"

Had they sedated him? She checked his IV fluid before ripping it out of his vein, then went about detaching him from the restraints, cursing under her breath. Cade would be back soon.

"Whisper?" the raider croaked, feeling at his shaved scalp with his freed hand.

"Yeah, it's Whisper." She loosened his other wrist, then worked on his ankle. "I'm getting you out of here. Come on, wake up for me."

But Clay-Crawler only opened his eyes for a split-second to catch sight of her, then sank back down in the cot and slowly smiled to himself. "Whisper..." he sighed contentedly, almost blissfully.

Shit. He was definitely sedated to some extent. Ilya finished with the restraints and looked around frantically for a solution. Could she carry him? Leaning in, she wrapped his arm behind her shoulders and attempted to heave up his weight, stifling her groan of effort. He was lean, practically bony, and his burden was manageable. Thank fuck.

Next, she gathered in her breath and released a fake cough, complimenting it with a resented, "Bless my steel!" That must have been heard throughout the entire deck, and she cringed at herself.

The effect came rapidly. Ilya heard the distant calling of a young voice. A squire? Really, Deacon? He or she was yelling something about a Dark Blood infiltration. She caught snatches of words amongst the murmurs of others. Raider assassin. Killed Maxson. Maxson is dead.

That caused an uproar. Voices called out in alarm, disbelief, anger. Boots pulverised the metal decks, power armour actually vibrating the foundations as soldiers raced for the source of the alert. She had to hand it to the spy. It was one hell of a distraction.

Ilya hefted Clay-Crawler in for a firmer hold and dragged him to the door. His feet were somewhat working, at least. Peering out, she saw that even the guards had abandoned their posts to investigate the possible assassination of their elder. Straining, she forced herself across the deck and down the treacherous stairway to the recreation deck, nearly losing Clay-Crawler on the way as his feet buckled beneath him. He only ended up with skinned knees, and it roused him a little more.

"Whisper rescuing me?" he asked in surprise.

"Yeah," she grunted under the strain, eating air to power her muscles. "Rescue."

"Thanks," he said simply, though merrily.

She got him to the rendezvous and came to a halt, scanning for Deacon, hoping he hadn't gotten himself into some serious trouble. In spite of his quirks, she trusted him implicitly. He was experienced in his field, and beneath the cover of banter, was steady and reliant. She had no doubts, not that she had room for them, right now.

Long seconds passed, and Ilya had time to think of Danse and wonder how he was fairing. Hopefully Maxson had gone easy on him... She adjusted Clay-Crawler's weight, but her body began to tremble under it. She was growing restless, until a power-armoured unit came barrelling toward them without hesitation. Her heart bulged in her throat, and she prepared to drop the raider in favour of her weapon for defence, when the soldier held up its hands.

"Wow, easy, it's just me." It was Deacon. Ilya inhaled sharply and felt her heart slip back to its rightful place. "You got him. Good. Now, let's double-time it getting him into this can. We don't have a lot of room for error."

How had he managed to steal that? Never mind, it was a good cover for escape. She waited for Deacon to clamber out from the armour and help her manoeuvre Clay-Crawler to its rear. "He's out of it. You think he'll even be able to walk in that thing?" she asked as they both lifted the dazed raider up into the suit.

" _I_ could barely walk in it, so I have no idea how _he's_ going to without looking like he's doing a really bad deathclaw impression."

"We can roll with that," she joked hopelessly. They were screwed.

Sealing him up, Ilya came around in front while Deacon took off on point to check if the coast was clear. She clicked her fingers at the eyes of the helmet. "Clay! You with me? Can you walk?"

The hulking form took a step and teetered, and she went to catch him on reflex, despite it being futile with the suit's weight. But luckily, the young raider within managed to catch himself with his hands and pushed himself upright again, wobbling before orienting himself. He tried for another step, and achieved two, arms out for balance as if walking a tight-rope.

"Big metal armour," Clay-Crawler stated with excitement, taking wonky steps as Ilya moved around on his six to cover him. "Fun! Will try not to fall."

"Yeah, please don't. That would really blow our cover," Deacon passed back over his shoulder as he ascended the steps. He peeped out, waved them up, and drew his laser pistol in true Brotherhood style to act the part of a soldier on alert mode.

Clay-Crawler tackled the stairs surprisingly well, bounding up them and only losing his footing once. Ilya prayed from behind that he wouldn't completely slip and tumble upon her. Making the most of the pandemonium around them, they hastened their way for the ladder to the Command Deck, only to be stopped in their tracks by Maxson pulling his way up the ladder, clearly pissed from all the noise.

Ilya just had a narrow second to fling herself behind Clay-Crawler's mass, but Deacon bore the brunt of Maxson's wrath.

"Soldier! What in god's name is all this nonsense?" he demanded, barely giving Deacon a full glance as he strolled ahead to catch sight of the commotion going on as soldiers tried to find their officers and officers tried to find their soldiers. They would get themselves in order soon, and would be patrolling the airship for the assassin.

Deacon put on his best 'tool' voice. "Elder Maxson, thank god it isn't true. A squire claimed he was approached by a raider assassin in disguise who claimed he just killed you! We were just on our way to secure the flight deck from any escape attempts, sir!"

Maxson did a double-take of Deacon at the news, who made sure to glance around as if scanning the area for the raider—just in case Maxson took enough notice to realise he didn't recognise him. But then the elder swooped into the infirmary on sudden thought, and slowly turned around again, his face contorted in rage as he digested the situation. "The raider is gone," he said with an eerie, cool anger. His eyes centred back on Deacon. "Get to the flight deck! Nobody leaves this airship! Nobody!" He stomped off for the deck above with a power-armoured knight tailing him for protection.

Ilya released a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding in, and came out from behind Clay-Crawler's shelter, giving Deacon the thumbs up, accompanied by a purposefully gaping mouth to show her shock. He cringed at her in agreement of the close call.

The three managed to navigate the power armour down the ladder without incident, rushing past the guards and claiming they were ordered to secure the flight deck before anyone had a chance to question them otherwise. Upon reaching the flight deck outside, Ilya stopped and addressed the guard at the door while Deacon and Clay-Crawler sped for the nearest vertibird.

"Raider attack on Elder Maxson!" she blasted at the soldier, disguising her voice with a deep rasp. "An assassin is onboard and loose! We're here to secure the deck under direct order from the elder, but he needs all the protection he can get!"

The soldier was visibly stunned at the news. "Oh, god. How did a raider get aboard? I've been keeping a vigilant watch. No raider came through this door! I would know one just by looking at it, disguise or not!"

"If you did slip up, then you can make up for it by finding that scum!" Ilya worked her silver-tongue in coercive force. "They need all the help they can get in there!"

"Shit!" The soldier turned and made for the Command Deck in one motion, leaving the deck virtually empty of resistance.

Deacon and Clay-Crawler awaited her ahead, but something was missing. Where was Danse? Deacon was checking the docked vertibirds, as if the paladin would be hiding inside one, and the raider was trying to figure out how to step up into their chosen vertibird escape in his clunky armour. They couldn't get out of here without Danse. None of them knew how to pilot the gunships.

She swore and raced up to Deacon. "He's not here," she panted. "We told him to wait out here, damn it. Where the hell would he be?"

"This was the flimsiest part of the plan," Deacon admitted, hands on hips in thought. "You think maybe Maxson saw through his cover story?"

Ilya glanced off in uncertainty, panic writhing in her gut. The implications terrified her for his safety. If that was the case, then he would either be in the ship's brig, or had been sent to the holding cells at the police station.

"Or," Deacon drawled, "he dobbed us in..."

She shook her head instantly. "No. He would never do that."

"Another explanation could be that he turned himself in," was the next suggestion.

Ilya found that she couldn't shoot down that theory. Had she pushed him so far into his guilt that he had given himself up? She liked to think of herself as a good judge of character, but how had she missed that? She was too focused on herself and her pursuit of war that she had completely neglected Danse. She felt sick to the stomach just enduring her own existence in that moment.

Her voice sounded distant even to herself. "What do we do, now?"

* * *

 **A/N:** Cliffhanger, sorry :3


	14. Fight-or-Flight

**Chapter 14: Fight-or-Flight**

* * *

Dread was all that came to her. Ilya stood on the Flight Deck of the Prydwen, devoid of solutions, and hope. It was over. Her paladin had given himself up, and doomed them along with himself.

" _I'll always have your back, even in the worst of times. I promise."_

His words had slipped from his lips so softly, so sincerely, and she had believed him. She had done it again. Put herself at risk of hurt by allowing someone in, so near to her heart. She had made a promise to herself not to do that with Danse, that it was hopeless, and wrong. Nate would always have her heart, even if he was gone. She was to be a weapon, nothing more.

"Think. Think. Fuck!" Even Deacon was lost. He paced back and forth, whacking his forehead with his palms. "Knew I shouldn't have trusted that bastard. Instincts, Deacon. Always follow your instincts. The one time! The one time I don't! God!" And even Deacon, the expert at distancing himself from personal entanglements, had fallen victim.

Ilya followed him through a hollow gaze. "What's the better way to go, jump from here, or try out execution?" He stopped and gaped at her. She was serious, and it took him a moment to realise it.

"Hey, no! Don't you do this to me!" he scolded, stepping toward her with an accusing finger. "You keep your head, even if shit's hitting the fan. So, come on, think. You've been around these flying death machines for a big chunk of your life, from back before the Great War, to all your time with these assholes. You didn't happen to pick up any pointers along the way? Maybe had a play around in a simulator back in the day for shits and giggles? Give me something, here."

He may be keeping his head on better than she was, but panic was edging its way up through his seams. "No, Deacon," she sighed in pity at his worthless attempt. "I can't fly. I was infantry—the army, not air force." He clicked his tongue in irritation. "Just accept it. We fucked up."

But he didn't accept it, shaking his head at her. "Another pointer from me. Never accept defeat until defeated. Now, come on. Let's do something crazy and save our own asses." He broke off and trotted back for the Command Deck.

Ilya stood motionless for a moment before switching to alarm and chasing after him. "Wait! Like what?"

"Like crashing this flying whale into the ocean and hoping for the best."

"What!?"

"Sounds like a sweet ride, yeah?"

She grabbed at his arm and yanked him around. "You can't be serious. You'll kill everyone aboard, not to mention us, and Danse, if he's still aboard!"

He placed his hands on his hips impatiently. "The Railroad has plans to take out the Brotherhood in the near future, and this would just fast-track it. And us? Well, you have any better ideas? I'm running near on dry, so please, feel free."

Reeling, Ilya had no words. Although many of their beliefs clashed with her own, the Brotherhood represented a real chance for humanity, and she didn't want them at the bottom of the ocean. Deacon nodded at her silence and turned for the bulkhead again, drawing his laser pistol.

Ilya balled her fists. "You're supposed to be the subtle one, and I'm the reckless one!" she screamed at him helplessly in a last, futile stand.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, my friend. I hope you can swim," Deacon tossed back smartly, reaching for the door. Only, the door reached out for him, first. He leapt back agilely to escape its attack, only to then be knocked down the steps by a hasty soldier in full power armour. Ilya reached for her laser pistol, but the soldier bound down the steps in one motion and pulled Deacon to his feet.

"Go! The vertibird, move!" the gruff voice under the helmet commanded.

"Danse!" Ilya gasped out, too stunned to really believe it was him.

He came at her at full speed before she could even retract her steps, grabbing her by an arm to drag her along with him. She was shoved into the vertibird before she knew it, and Clay-Crawler—who had still been trying to climb aboard this entire time—took a metallic boot up the ass-plate to end up sprawled across the bottom of the hull. Deacon leapt in a second after Danse, who was climbing out of his armour.

"Take it, Harper," Danse demanded as he pulled himself into the helm and readied them for detachment from the dock. She did as she was told and sealed herself into his armour without question. Hopefully it would be enough to shelter her from the rainstorm of lasers they were soon to be eating.

"Where were you?" she could finally ask as she clung to a handhold. "We thought you'd had second thoughts."

Danse took a moment to acknowledge her, concentrating on getting them free of the Prydwen. The vertibird quaked as the mechanism set it loose, and that brief moment of freefall was relieved by a sustained altitude as he locked the joystick. "I did," he admitted in harsh honesty, reaching up to tweak a control above him. "But didn't."

Ilya refrained from keeping that topic flowing. His clipped tone said enough. This whole ordeal had rubbed him the wrong way, and he wasn't up for talking it through with her. Fair enough. She could just appreciate that he had come back for them. He had come back for _her._

They had endured a complete minute of peaceful flight until red streaks harassed them from the Prydwen. Soldiers were fanning out across the railings and opening fire in wild abandon.

Deacon stood from his seat and leaned into the cockpit, having to step around Clay-Crawler's prone form. "Might wanna get us clear before they decide it's a good idea to fire rockets at us!"

"Do you have experience piloting a vertibird? No. Sit down!" Danse snapped back, and Deacon did sit back down, but not without giving him a violent updraft of the finger.

They collected a fair dose of laser scorching before Danse could get them far enough out of range for the fire to die off. Ilya gave Clay-Crawler a hand up, then squeezed past him to reach Danse. He was playing around with a certain system on the dashboard. None of it made sense to her. "What is that?"

"I'm disabling the IFF transponder. It will stop them from triangulating our signal," he provided flatly. She studied the hard set of his profile from her angle. Whatever happened with Maxson had affected him to the core. She knew that an attempt to alleviate his tension wouldn't be appropriate right now, but he was daunting when he was in a mood.

She decided to go down the route of distraction. "So, when did you learn to fly? Or is it standard procedure for all soldiers to learn the basics?"

"Not at all," he answered with a significant decrease in tension. "Actually, there's quite a story to how I learned to fly..."

He never got to elaborate, because Deacon gave a warning that sent everyone's tension back up to full capacity. "Guys, we have a friend."

They all turned to see the source of his warning. Another vertibird was headed their way, gaining on them by keeping to a lower altitude and skipping the high winds.

"Fuck!" Ilya let rip.

Danse was more productive. "Hold on. I'm going to try losing them in the buildings." He banked the aircraft toward the nearest skyscraper, sending Deacon across the seats with a yelp. "Sorry," Danse then offered. "A little rusty, it seems."

"How good are you in a dogfight? 'Cause I think that's how this is gonna go," Deacon yelled over the winds.

"Negative. We avoid contact at all costs. No opening fire."

"And if _they_ open fire on _us_?"

"I said no opening fire!" Danse barked again in full domineering mode.

Deacon sputtered in disbelief while Ilya leaned into the cockpit for a word. "What if you can't lose them?" she asked, keeping her tone civil.

"...We'll deal with it if it comes to that."

She leaned back and took a hard inhale. Looked like they were doing things his way, then. He swerved around another building's flank, so close that Ilya thought she might be able to touch it if she reached out. She gripped the overhead and leaned out to catch sight of their tail, growing a frown as she saw it reappear from behind the building. They were too close, they'd never lose them at this rate.

Danse orbited the same building until he could branch off for another. Before he was in range to bank, lead rounds pelted the vertibird's hull. Both Ilya and Clay-Crawler leaned back into the troop hold, while Deacon huddled down low.

"Well they opened fire!" he shouted.

"You don't say!" Ilya shouted back. She knelt in front of him to keep him covered, gripping at the side of the hull.

Danse banked, hard, bringing them behind the next building's cover on a dangerous lean that nearly had them clip it with the wing.

"Wow, wow, take it easy, cowboy!" Deacon cautioned in alarm, having a hard time staying put.

"Deacon, I highly advise you sit down, and shut up, before you're thrown out of this aircraft!"

"I'm _trying_ to sit down, but you're not making it easy back here."

Ilya tuned out their bickering as she toyed with the thought of revving up that minigun to return fire. As much as she despised the idea of shooting down Brotherhood allies, they were running out of options.

"Danse!" she called.

"Negative!" He knew what she wanted to do.

The shadow of the building surrendered them back to sunlight, but also back to the other vertibird as it veered out from the opposite side and rotated to present its minigun. They opened fire again with merciless force, targeting the vertibird's nose. Danse grunted and flinched away as the windscreen shattered, hailing him with shards of glass, and his trajectory was knocked. The vertibird careened sharply, and Ilya felt herself tilting back and falling right at the building.

She managed to cling on to the hull, but a yell from Deacon meant he hadn't. She released one hand from its grip and leaned around, reaching for him, but he had slipped too far. "No! Deacon!"

His slide was too sudden, too sharp, for him to catch his own weight on the way out through the open hull, and his freefall could be missed in the blink of an eye. Ilya was set to scream for the loss of him, when his freefall came to jerking halt by the hand of another metal arm. Clay-Crawler had a vise grip on his wrist as Danse managed to curve the aircraft back around the building, the minigun's volley of lead chasing them and battering the exterior hull. Gravity denied Clay-Crawler any attempt at hauling Deacon back inside, and he was left swinging outside by an arm, his feet so close to skimming the building's wall.

"Deacon, hold on!" Ilya shrieked out to him. It made no difference to her that Clay-Crawler was doing all the holding, she just needed Deacon back in one piece.

The lap around the building seemed to stretch on forever, the pull of gravity growing sickening. Ilya heaved herself up to glance back at the hostile vertibird. It was right on them, the torrent of fire endless. If Danse pulled away from the building or slowed by just a notch, they would be a fat-and-happy target for easy pickings. She made a decision, free hand reaching for her laser pistol, the motion languid in the g-forces. Her fire lanced back into the vertibird's canopy, and her finger was ruthless as several bursts finally drove it back to a safe distance.

Danse noticed the fallback and eased up on the constant bank, making for the shelter of another skyscraper. "Sound off! Is anyone hurt?" he called back, his voice a hardened rasp.

"No, we're all good back here," Ilya answered. Clay-Crawler pulled Deacon back into the aircraft, and Ilya engulfed him in relief.

"I did good?" Clay-Crawler asked, standing in the armour awkwardly, looking down at them.

"Yes," she nodded, "you did good, Clay. Thank you." She released Deacon after he coughed against the crush of metal arms. "You okay?"

"No, not really," Deacon wheezed out, obviously winded. "I think I shat myself..."

Ilya puffed out a small laugh. He may have had the wind blown out of him, but not his wits. "Never do that to me again."

He nodded before peeling his headgear off, and gave her a weak thumbs-up. "Promise."

Next, Ilya pulled herself up and stepped over to the cockpit. Glass littered the helm. "Danse, you in one piece?" He grunted in answer. She couldn't see much of him due to the helmet blocking her field of vision, so she released the clamps and pulled it off, suppressing a gasp at what she now could see. The glass had bitten into Danse with its many broken teeth, leaving small slices across one side of his face and neck. Blood had gushed from the many wounds, dripping into an eye that he had wiped at and left a smear. She then noticed that neither of his hands had been spared, both were thickly bloodied with shards still protruding from the skin. Bloody handprints streaked down the front of his uniform. Blood. Blood was everywhere. It was a grisly sight.

"Oh god, Danse," Ilya whispered in horror. "Here." She reached back and took Deacon's scribe headgear, using the soft material to gently wipe away the blood in Danse's eye. He hissed as she accidentally scraped along a slit in his cheekbone.

"It's not as bad as it looks," he gave assurance. "Nothing a few Stimpacks can't mend."

That might be true, but it still looked like it hurt like a bitch. "Are you gonna be alright?" she asked, voice a caress of compassion. It made her ache to see him like that.

"I'll manage," he deflected in his usual tact of dignity. "But we have a more pressing matter of concern. One of the engines was damaged, and we're down to only one. That means we won't have the speed to stay ahead of them when they come back around."

"Shit," Ilya breathed, then shook her head in defiance. "Danse, we have to use that minigun."

He held firm. "No. I told you, I won't condone an act of hostility against the Brotherhood."

"Then what do you suggest we do, wave our little white flag and hope for the best?"

"What I suggest," he began pointedly, adjusting a few controls, "is dropping you on the rooftop of one of these buildings, and drawing the Brotherhood off." Their altitude began to rise.

Ilya's rejection was instant, and stern. "No. No way. Think of something else." First his one man army against the raiders in the Rad Lands, and now this? She was beginning to think the man had a death wish.

"There are no other options that I'll stand for, Harper." He continued to close in on the nearest building, resolute, and fucking crazy. She was nearing the end of her tether.

"Um. Whisper?" Her head snapped around on Clay-Crawler, annoyed by the interruption. He was pointing hesitantly out behind them. "They come back." Sure enough, the hostile vertibird was coming in hot, rising to meet their altitude, and angling for firing range. The minigun spun to life once again, its charging whir giving a cruel reunion. Clay-Crawler soaked up the opening barrage before he ducked back behind the hull.

Ilya snapped her attention back to the suicide corner and the blockhead sitting in it. She was done being patient with him and his morals. "If you think I'm gonna leave you here to die while I jump to freedom, then I'm sorry, but fuck yourself, Paladin." He angled her a look of utter astonishment, but she ignored it and stomped to the minigun, swinging it around on target.

"Ilya, NO!" Danse roared, the grit in his tone and the sheer volume blistering her, but she carried on. When she spun up the barrel, she heard him slam the joystick, and the vertibird twisted to pull her off-target, rounds impacting the building.

She snarled like an enraged creature. "Damn it, Danse! We have to defend ourselves!"

"Stand down, soldier!"

"Danse, this is crazy!" Deacon backed her up after their twisting motion nearly rendered him a bullet sponge. The vertibird was choking on metal and coughing up acrid smoke, birthing flames from more than just the damaged engine. Danse was struggling to maintain altitude climb.

Ilya caught her balance after a harsh shudder. "They're going to shoot us down!"

"Jump! Now!"

They were passing over the height of the building. If they were going to jump, now was their only chance. "No! I'm not leaving you!"

The chance had come and gone, just like that, and Danse was furious. "God damn you, Ilya!" His voice was a rough, gravelly assault, and the scold was like a whiplash, but it only incensed her fury. She drew her laser pistol and opened fire on the other vertibird, stepping right out into the line of fire and enduring their returned onslaught.

Danse hated that.

"I SAID STAND DOWN, DAMN IT!"

Ilya didn't stand down. She continued firing until her clip was empty and had to duck back to reload. They were beyond winning in a straight-up minigun contest, their vertibird was a smoking wreck on its last legs. "Clay, get on the minigun!"

"Thanks," he piped up, and stepped across to the other side of the vertibird, which was blocked as Danse had it facing away to prevent its use.

"Rip it off!"

She watched as the raider processed that with confusion, then he attempted it, giving a peculiar cackle of delight as it gave way under his power armour's strength. He rushed to her side and clicked the trigger, winding up the barrel and letting loose. His aim was erratic, but it gave Ilya the distraction she needed, and Danse was powerless to stop her.

Dashing out from cover, she reined in her focus, took aim, and snapped off a single red spear that impaled the pilot smack-centre in the face. The enemy vertibird lurched as a sudden result, nose-diving right into the building beside them and expiring in a fiery combustion. The shockwave hit them hard, and Deacon was lucky not to be thrown out again.

The sudden lack of heavy weapons fire and thundering rotors was oddly unsettling. The fire from the impact was quickly devoured by an oily black smoke, and as Ilya rose from being knocked down, she saw the memory it held—of the blinding light, and the mushroom cloud that was the forerunner to the destruction of her world. She was lost in that cloud for a moment.

All was silent but the wash of wind around them. Danse said nothing. Clay-Crawler stood motionless with the minigun still in hand, staring at the remnants of the vertibird. Even Deacon looked sombre.

Ilya pulled off the helmet from Danse's armour again, along with her scribe headgear, dropped them, and took a deep inhale, wishing it was Jet. She felt the blood drain from her face, and a nauseating worm of remorse work itself into her stomach. Those soldiers had just been doing their duty, following orders, striving to avenge the wrong done to them and their people. They had been rightful in their actions, and she had done wrong. It hit her, just then, that those were the first lives she had ever taken that she regretted, and that were avoidable. Back in the wars of the old world, she had been given no choice over the lives she stole. The very fate of humanity dictated who she would kill, and if she refused, someone else would kill in her place. She was an experienced soldier, hardened to the repercussions of killing—as much as a humane human could be—but not like this.

But she had made the right choice. She had to defend them. _It was them or us,_ she told herself. It was a new world out here. A dog-eat-dog world. She had made the right choice.

Something at the helm was cranked, and the vertibird slowly struggled its way across the sky, away from the city.

"I'm sorry, Danse..."

He said nothing. Nothing at all.

* * *

 _ **-That moment when you see it pop up in the corner after you've done something naughty [Danse hated that] I thought of naming the chapter that, but figured it would take away from the seriousness.**_

 _ **-Just want to apologize for the heavy action in this chapter, I know not everyone likes reading action. Don't worry, there will be plenty of emotion and character-driven chapters to come :)**_

 _ **-Another thank you for the continued support. I know I sound like a broken record, but I'm more grateful than I can express so you will just have to deal with me thanking you to death :P**_


	15. Broken Steel

**Chapter 15: Broken Steel**

* * *

The silence was unbearable, permeating the confines of the vertibird. No one dared to break it. No one even knew how to.

Danse took them over the Wastes like a phantom wandering in the lost lands of his mind. Ilya stared out absently, any wonderings at his destination never even passing through her mind. All she saw were her ghosts, and the barren world their dust had been lost to.

The terrain greeted her as they touched down, but she couldn't recall its approach. Numbly, she felt Danse's armour carry her down to greet the terrain in return. Her first thought was to exit her paladin's armour. She didn't deserve its embrace.

"Well," Deacon dared as he stepped up beside her, squinting from the sun. "I still think _my_ idea of crashing the airship into the ocean would have been a lot safer, but doing things this way gained me a new friend." He clapped Clay-Crawler's armour on the back fondly. "You really came through for me, pal. Glad to have you on the team. From now on, if we ever have to smuggle you out of someplace again, I'll hide you up my asshole if I have to."

Clay-Crawler tried pulling off his helmet, but didn't understand the locking mechanism. "We friends now?"

"Oh, here," Deacon reached up to help him pop the seals. "There ya go. Yeah, buddies for life. We should really think up a squad name. The Whispering Clay Dancers... The Crawling... Dancing Whispers. Dancing Whispers of Clay? Okay, this is harder than I thought it would be. And hey, how come I don't have a nickname, too?"

Ilya just listened as the two bonded and babbled on about all things meaningless in contrast to the prior incident, not really paying mind to their exact words for the growing abyss in her mind. Amongst the chatter, a rustle carried to her eardrums from the vertibird, then the clatter of boots upon steel, before hitting dirt.

Ilya dashed around the length of the vertibird to catch Danse in his retreat, seemingly in no specific direction. She didn't even know where he had set them down. His stride was heavy, fists coiled and set at his sides in rigid tension. He wasn't even bothering to get his armour...

"Wait!" she called, falling into step behind him, though having trouble matching his pace. "Let's just talk about this."

"There is _nothing_ to discuss."

"Just let me explain, please." But he kept on walking, determined to get away from her. "Danse, please don't do this."

"Do what?" he growled. "Be disappointed in you? Ashamed of you?" He wouldn't even look at her.

"Don't shut me out," she answered pleadingly, "give me a chance to explain myself." Still, he kept walking, so she went in to clutch at his arm. "Please."

He shrugged her off and whirled on her, brow drawn like a weapon over his bloodied face. "After what you just did, I'm not sure I owe you any chances at all!"

"What was I supposed to do, let you die?" she asked, palms up incredulously.

"That would have been the honourable thing to do, yes." He said it without a hint of doubt, a brother of steel, through and through. "When we're under the Brotherhood's jurisdiction, you are under _my_ command. Not only did you disobey a direct order, but you blatantly disrespected my authority, and killed fellow Brotherhood soldiers!" His voice had ripened into that hard grit again, bruising her soul with each syllable.

"I know it's bad," she tried to allay his storm with honesty, "I know what I've done, and I'm so sorry it had to come to that, Danse. But I had no choice. I had—"

"You had a choice!" he boomed, stabbing a bloodstained finger at her. "I gave you one! But instead, you chose to do the very thing I ordered you _not_ to do! Damn it, Harper!" She flinched under the whiplash of his tongue. He had advanced on her in his outrage, seeming to grow in height and tower over her. His uniform restricted the tension of trembling muscles beneath, and his face, gridded in wounds and still seeping blood, was marred by his anguish. She had never seen him so angry.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say, I—" her words tangled in her throat "—I never thought this would happen..."

"What did you think would happen?" his words bit. "I don't think you thought it through at all. You charged ahead recklessly, like you always do, without any regard to the consequences for others. Not only have you shown dishonour, but you have shown me how selfish you really are."

"Hey, now," Ilya heard Deacon utter from somewhere behind her. She glanced around to see him step in at her side. She hadn't even been aware that he had come after them, she was so focused on Danse. "Ilya is far from selfish. She's the most selfless person I've ever met."

Danse gave Deacon a look of crushing vehemence. "Stay out of it, Deacon! This has nothing to do with you."

"Actually, it does, when my friend is being wrongly accused," Deacon defended boldly. "See, she's out here every day helping others. I've never seen anyone push themselves so hard, and she's literally killing herself doing it. It's all she cares about. She doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, started taking—"

"Deacon, please," Ilya cut him off just in time. The last thing Danse needed to hear was that she was an addict, too. "Thank you, but I need to handle this myself."

He passed her a serious look. She rarely saw his eyes without the glasses, and had forgotten how serious he could be when the situation called for it. "You sure?" She nodded, and he hesitantly stepped away, though he didn't go far.

Danse picked up right where he left off. "Just tell me one thing. Why did you even join up with the Brotherhood to begin with? I was under the impression that you valued what the Brotherhood stood for, but clearly, I don't even know who you are."

There was such contempt in his eyes, and his words stung her. "Danse, you _do_ know me. Better than anyone out here." His expression didn't change, so she went on. "At first, the Brotherhood was just an in for me, a way to find my son, an advantage in combat, a way to gain allies, a way back to my old life in the military. The drive, the sense of purpose, the camaraderie... Then you started to show me what the Brotherhood meant at its core, and I connected with that. Protecting humanity from itself. And yeah, I don't agree with everything, and I think the Brotherhood has a responsibility to be doing more for the people out here, I've never tried to hide that from you, but underneath all that is that core purpose... and you," she finished quietly, feebly, unsure how he would take it.

He didn't really seem to take that in, or grasp the meaning of it, just stared her down, still, eyes so cold and darkened by a heavy brow that refused to recede. Eventually, he gathered his breath and shook his head. "I don't know what to believe anymore. How can any of that be true after what you did to the Brotherhood today?"

"I did what I felt was right, what I thought had to be done, and I didn't do any of it lightly."

"There was nothing at all right about what you did today, Harper," he shot back, lip curled in disgust.

She nodded her acceptance and sank her gaze to the ground. He had fallen back to calling her by her surname. It hurt more than she wanted to let herself admit.

After a lengthy silence, he added, "I don't know how I could ever forgive this..."

Her head snapped up at that, catching his eyes as they, too, snapped up from a gaze to the ground. "We can work through this. I know I fucked up, real bad, but I can make it right," she pleaded. For whatever reason, she hadn't even considered the fact that he might want to cut ties over this. Maybe the fear of it had been blocking it out of her mind, and now presented as a very real possibility, the fear had spiked.

His forehead creased in sudden unease, and he glanced off, wordlessly.

Ilya felt her lip tremble and bit down on it. "What about the raid? Will you still help us?"

"You have the raider, now. I'm sure he'll provide adequate assistance." He looked back at her, eyes shrouded in despair. "You got everything you wanted."

She shook her head and stepped inward, taking advantage of his newfound calm. "Not if it means losing you."

"Well, maybe you should have considered that before you betrayed the Brotherhood and killed its people," he rebounded off her advance, voice climbing in volume again. He really wasn't going to let her in.

Ilya felt a pressure climb up her throat, and a stinging behind her eyes. "I couldn't let you die..."

But Danse was merciless, seeming not to even hear her. "I betrayed my own for you! I did something I never, _ever,_ thought I could do, and never would have done had I not met you. I feel myself changing, losing grip of the Brotherhood's ideals the more I'm around you." He pushed away and paced slightly in his turmoil, features a medley of anger and sorrow. "I don't know what the _hell_ this is, and I don't know what the hell is happening, but now those soldiers are dead, and I'll carry that with me for the rest of my life!"

She felt herself sinking under his wrath, but she had caught the waver in his voice; he was nearing the brink of breakdown. Knowing she had caused him that much heartache was eating her alive, and tears were welling up beyond her control. This could be it. She had really fucked things up between them, and she could lose him for it. She felt desperation surge, though no words came to her summoning. Looking at him like this, hurt and distraught, all she wanted to do was rush to him and comfort him, wrap him in her arms and protect him from the pain, dab away the blood of his ails and kiss them until they healed. But he hated her.

"Do you even mourn for those soldiers?" he questioned in her silence, regaining control of his temper.

"Of course I do." It came out in a sob, as much as she had tried to push it down. "The moment it happened I felt dead inside."

Danse held her eyes blankly, his face now taut to endure grief. "Not as dead inside as I feel," he mumbled, hollow. A broken brother of steel. He turned, then, and made for his armour beside the vertibird. Ilya couldn't move, she just stood and stared at the distant nothing.

When the rumbling of his footsteps drew near, she came back to life and turned to stop him from passing her. "Please don't go." He had put his helmet on, so she couldn't read his face, or maybe see his tears. The thought killed something inside her. "Please," she sobbed again, cradling her elbows in her hands. "I need you." But he just continued out into the Wasteland.

Ilya stood there and watched his figure move further and further away, growing hazier and hazier through her veil of tears. What if she never saw him again? What if he requested a transfer as far away from her as possible? She didn't know if she could keep going without him by her side. Without him, none of it seemed worth it. Nothing mattered. He was the force that kept her alive, and with him gone, she would just be a ghost, wandering in search of death.

First Nate, and now Danse. Shaun had been the force that kept her alive with Nate gone, but what did she still have to fight for with Danse gone? The fate of the Commonwealth? Was she kidding herself thinking she could actually make a difference out here? The fate of Shaun? Did she really think she could change him at his core? They all seemed like hopeless fights, hopeless reasons to stay alive. It would just be easier to stop fighting all together, end her torture and put herself at peace, finally. Maybe there was a place where the dead went, where she could see Nate again, be with all those she lost.

But Danse wasn't dead. He was alive, and still fighting for what he believed in, for what they both believed in—a safer future. She could still help him in that.

But god, what had she done? Slumping to her knees, Ilya released her misery unchecked, the sobs now bursting from her chest and wracking her body. _I can't go on without him. I can't do it without him. I can't. I can't. I can't._

"Hey, come on, now," Deacon consoled, hovering over her with hands on her shoulders. "Pull yourself together. The guy's not worth it."

She shook her head through the weeping and bowed into her hands, rocking on her knees. "Yes he is," she mourned quietly in argument.

Deacon gave her shoulders a supportive rub. "Come on, up you get," he commanded gently. "We can't stay out here like this. Let's get you home with a nice hot cup of something not irradiated, a pile of those magazines you love to read, and a smelly dog to cuddle with. You'll feel much better in no time. Promise."

She didn't want to feel better, she didn't deserve to. She wanted to curl into a ball and wait there until something came to kill her in kindness. Danse was suffering because of her. She deserved to suffer tenfold.

But Deacon was being persistent, issuing repetitive encouragements, trying to lift her up under the arms, and almost succeeding, before she shoved him off with a yell. "Don't! Just leave me! Just go away!"

He backed off, more out of fright than obedience. "I'm trying to help you, here," he said in self-defence.

"I don't need your help!" she screamed at him, venting it all out upon him. "Just leave me here!"

"Come on, Ili, don't push your friends away. I'll carry you home myself if I have to. And you know I'll do it. Might break my back, but I'll still do it."

Ilya sobbed anew and covered her eyes with a hand hopelessly. What the hell was she doing screaming at him for? He was just trying to help. She didn't deserve him, either. "I'm sorry...I'm so sorry... I don't know what I'm doing anymore..."

Deacon took that as a signal to try again, so he swooped in and knelt beside her, patting her shoulders as if she were a child. "There, there." She remembered that he wasn't used to 'the whole friendship thing,' and forgave his awkwardness.

She made an effort to quell her throes for his sake, swallowing fresh sobs and pushing roughly at tears. Her nose cleared enough for her sense of smell to return, and she sniffed at a certain scent. "What's that smell?" she asked in a small, weak voice.

Deacon went still, his patting motions coming to a halt. "Yeah," he cleared his throat. "When I said I shat myself... yeah, no I meant I _really_ shat myself..."

"Jesus, Deacon," Ilya sighed gently, not having the energy to laugh, or even smile.

"Hey, that shit back there was insane," he retorted. "Pun not intended."

After a while, she rewarded his efforts and allowed him to help her stand, legs feeling boneless and limp, but she refused to lean her weight on him. She had to be strong if she wanted to get through this. They picked their way back toward the smoking vertibird.

"Guess we'll have to leave it out here," Deacon said in disappointment. "Too bad. Sturges might have been able to fix it up for us to use in the raid." He peered over at Clay-Crawler, who was taking in his new environment with open-mouthed awe. "But at least we got a bonus set of power armour to go with the raider. Good package deal, I say."

Ilya said nothing. She merely nodded. It was all she could bring herself to do in response. Her response in thought, however, was more negative. _I lost my soul in that package deal._

* * *

 _ **-It broke a little piece of my heart making myself write this, but the show must go on! Sorry to all the Danse fans for putting him through this :(**_

 _ **-As always, I really appreciate all the feedback on the previous chapter, it keeps me motivated to see how much you guys are getting into this and connecting with the characters :) The only one I can actually take full credit for is Clay-Crawler, but it still gives me warm fuzzies :3**_


	16. It's All Over But the Crying

**Chapter 16: It's All Over But the Crying**

* * *

The landscape ahead was grainy, unfocused, nothingness. It was dust and bone. It was dry and dead. Dead, like his insides. Each step he took was draining, yet he never wanted to stop. Never wanted to stare his demons in the eyes and face them. He knew they would outwit him. Knew they would drag him to his failure. He always knew his enemy.

Why did she do it? Why couldn't she have just followed his order? She should have jumped, and let him choose his fate. Redemption. The fate he had rightfully chosen for himself. It was by his code. But she had chosen his fate for him, forced him to witness her betrayal, to both him and the Brotherhood, a betrayal he had a hand in, and forced him to live with it. She let her selfish reasoning take charge. She was a soldier, she knew the battlefield shed no mercy for the bonds of fellow soldiers. She was supposed to let him die. For the greater good.

His veins were thrumming with blood that burned, head pounding with that familiar companion of a headache that he had yet to banish since its spawning back on recon. A headache he could deal with, but the inevitable sleepless nights were promising to be his undoing.

Danse was not accustomed to dealing with so much personal conflict. This was all so far out of his comfort zone that he felt in an alien world, cast from his monotonous obligations to the barren environment of his own scourge. With Cutler, it had been different. He had been faced with two simple choices, to end his suffering, or not to. The insult of his existence had outlined his rightful duty. Turning to an intense hatred of the super mutants had allowed him to move on from the loss of a good friend, and he had never looked back. From the moment he joined the Brotherhood, his life had always lead a steadfast example, a paragon of duty and honour, and he had been proud, pure. Now? Now he didn't even know what he was.

No matter how much he tried to blame Ilya, it all eventually circulated back around on him. It seemed he had demeaned Ilya with everything he had, and now there was little left to defend his integrity against himself.

Was all this his fault? Ilya had been through so much, was hurting so much, yet was holding back so much, had he failed in predicting all this from her? She was a strong woman, perhaps the most resilient he had ever encountered, and that was saying a lot amongst the Brotherhood. Coming back from the Institute, learning of her son's fate, and yet keeping herself together enough to continue functioning, was a feat he could only dream of surpassing. Even when she broke down before him, after Maxson's denial, she had quickly collected herself, regained control, and pushed on. No drama, no self-pity, no nonsense; she strived to never become a burden on others. She was the epitome of fortitude. But there was no doubt that she was on a decline. Had he given her state of mind too wide a berth? Had he neglected her, and in doing so, ultimately set her up to commit her betrayal?

Had he just... let it all slide, as Elder Maxson had said of him?

* * *

" _Harper is MIA, and was last seen with you. Did I not give you strict instructions to keep her in line and have her report back by morning? Or perhaps you let it slide, as you seem to have an increasing tendency to do with her. Explain yourself, Paladin."_

" _Elder, I'm afraid you're not going to like what I have to say..."_

" _Be out with it, Paladin," Elder Maxson issued curtly, impatiently._

" _Yes, sir." Danse took a brief moment of respite, then plunged ahead, straightening his stance in trained formality. "I regret to report that Knight Harper went MIA in between the hours of 0200 to 0500 this morning, during her night-watch. I was asleep at the time, and woke to find her gone, without any trace but weak tracks, which I quickly lost due to her skill in stealth." That was an extra lie; Ilya may be quick and silent, but her recklessness in stealth left much to be desired. "Her last trace was just south of the Boston Police Rationing Site."_

 _Maxson's silence dominated the entire deck in something of a staredown, eyes narrowed into Danse's, seeking to root out deception. Both men knew that the Paladin was poised beyond faltering to any attempts of intimidation, even to Maxson. But both men also knew each other well enough to detect faint ripples under the surface. Maxson was still suspicious._

" _I'm not blind to the fact that you and Harper have grown close, Danse. You needn't go to so much effort to conceal it. But her betrayal to you does come as a surprise." There was a touch of sympathy, tucked under the suspicion. Maxson was giving him the benefit of the doubt. So he did still have some faith in him, or at least, wanted to, enough to push aside his suspicions. As long as he had known him, Maxson was still a mystery to Danse._

" _Believe me, Elder, I never expected this from her, either. She was undoubtedly upset from your talk yesterday, and must have concluded that she couldn't trust me to side with her against you." He hated the taste of the untruth on his tongue, but his anguish in the act helped to make it all the more believable. Maxson gave him a knowing nod._

" _I suspect she will be planning to gather her allies and assault the quarry without the Brotherhood's aid," the Elder sighed, shaking his head. "The woman is stubborn, I'll give her that much." He passed a look to Kells, who nodded his agreement._

" _I had her pegged as a rogue element the moment I laid eyes on her," the lancer-captain offered, perhaps a little too proud at his premonitions. "She may have claimed to have served in the military in her time, but that means little to us now, in a very different world."_

 _Maxson gave the railing beneath his feet a stern look and nodded, obviously irritated by the unfolding of events. Danse felt an itch along his skin at the underlining point of the moment. His superiors were disappointed in his choice of sponsorship. It was embarrassing, to say the least. But he had to keep the ball rolling. For her._

" _Elder, requesting permission to lead a search effort in locating Knight Harper." It was the only way to remove himself and the heist team from the Prydwen without suspicions._

 _Maxson must have seen that one coming, his answer was immediate. "Removing yourself from the situation may be the best course of action, Paladin Danse. You have a personal stake in this, enough to cloud your judgement should things become tense in locating Harper's whereabouts."_

" _Sir, with respect, I feel this situation would benefit from my personal advantage in talking Harper down, if she chose to attempt escape or use deadly force. Not only that, but I would like the opportunity to redeem my lapse in professional judgement by apprehending her myself."_

 _Maxson considered that in deep concentration, seeming to weigh up his options. "Alright, Paladin. Have it your way. Permission granted. But I want Knight-Sergeant Muller at the forefront of your team. I need an unsympathetic figure in this. Keep in mind that I'm not doubting your ability to separate personal from professional, but Harper is known to be rather persuasive, and I need every precaution taken. I trust you understand."_

 _Danse resisted the urge to grind his molars. He had hoped he wouldn't have to deal with Muller again. "Understood, Elder."_

" _Gather what equipment you need, and head out to the police station when ready to assign your team. You should find Muller patrolling the grid with our fresh recruits. I'm sure he'll relish the opportunity to get out in the field. But get yourself some rest before heading out again, I know you'll be eager to locate her, but I'm sure Harper will need time to organise an assault on that quarry. Dismissed."_

" _Thank you, Elder." Danse stood motionless as he watched Maxson and Kells head back for the bulkhead, not daring to move lest he somehow reveal his treason and undo all his regretful work. He had never been adept at lying, it had always felt jarring and dirty. But it seemed he had adopted yet another skillset from Ilya while out in the Wastes with her. Paying close attention to all her exchanges with the shady scum of the Commonwealth had paid off._

 _Just as he was about to breathe easy, Maxson uttered a noise that sounded like a grunt and turned back. "Just so we're clear, I expect Harper brought back alive, and relatively unscathed, at any cost. AWOL she might be, but she's still an invaluable asset to us. I trust you can have that done."_

 _Once again, Danse picked up on that fleeting instance in his Elder's eyes, a straying from the professional to the personal. Maxson was human and liable to compassion, he had witnessed it given out to wounded or emotionally compromised soldiers many a time; the Elder wasn't heartless. But it was odd that there appeared to be a certain sensitivity for Harper, given all the trouble she had caused him since her initiation. Perhaps the two shared an understanding that the paladin wasn't aware of. Whatever it was, it was none of his business._

" _I'll make it a priority, Elder," Danse assented as his superiors took their leave. He could worry about delivering on all this later, once everything was safely over. Once Ilya was safe._

* * *

His footsteps dragging him to the police station, Danse mulled over his following actions. He had gone straight to his personal quarters and stared at the walls for no good reason, stalling, waiting. But it had served him no purpose. He then proceeded down deck to where he had found Harper right after Maxson had shot her down—the foredeck. And again, he had stood there aimlessly and stared out across the Commonwealth. That seemed to be his new favourite pastime.

He had heard the commotion up-deck, and had scrambled to thread his thoughts together, but nothing logical would gel. In the end, with the ticking of time badgering him on, he had acted on sheer instinct and sent himself bowling out to the Flight Deck to take charge of the escape. He should have just gone straight back to Maxson and reported his mutiny. Or better yet, found Harper and Deacon and put a stop to their little heist. Then she wouldn't have done what she did. Then those soldiers would still be alive.

"Danse?" A cleared throat. "Paladin Danse, sir, is that you?"

Danse was so lost in his own world that he had completely missed his arrival at the police station's forward barricades. He finished his current step with a heavy _clunk_ and regarded Scribe Haylen with a dumbfounded recognition.

Haylen squirmed in his silence and hurried to justify her perception. "The armour plating, sir, I'd recognise those particular scratches and dents anywhere."

Her timid humour shook him loose from the cloud following him. "Apologies, Haylen, I was elsewhere." He reached up to remove his helmet, but just couldn't bring himself to greet her with the same smile of familiarity. It had been a long time since he had seen her, but the usual fondness he would have expected from himself just wasn't there. "I understand my arrival is a little behind schedule. I hope that hasn't put a spanner in any operations here?"

"No—not at all, sir," she was quick to assure, then her eyes fixed upon him with a new intensity. "Uh, sir, your face. What happened? Do you need medical attention?"

His wounds had completely slipped his mind. "Oh, it's nothing, Haylen. I'll make sure to grab a few Stimpak shots before heading out again."

She scrutinized the cuts with acute eyes, concern on her brow. "Some of those might need stitches, sir... I-it would only take a moment."

"Thank you, Haylen, but really," he held up a dismissive hand, "It's fine."

She wasn't pleased, and that concern now overtook her eyes, but she relented. "Alright, sir, but if you find the bleeding doesn't stop on its own, please don't hesitate to come to me for treatment."

"I'll keep that in mind." He just wanted to get inside, hit the sack, wake up again, grab Muller and a team, and be off on his pretend mission to locate Harper. The next day could then breeze by without any further hitches, so long as he kept them on the wrong track and turned up empty handed. He started for the entrance, but Haylen apparently wasn't finished.

"Um, Paladin Danse, sir... about Harper's... absence... I just wanted to extend my sympathies and let you know that I'll be available if you need an ear to talk to or... a shoulder, sir."

He had stopped short and listened painstakingly, and now wasn't sure how to respond. Haylen had always been a sensitive soul, and particularly perceptive in picking up signs of fatigue and trauma in soldiers under her care, and Danse knew without a doubt that she suspected there was more to his demeanour than he was letting on. But he was nearly depleted of his ability to keep up the lies, and just couldn't stomach adding another to his collection.

"Thank you, Haylen..." Without looking back at her, he progressed inside the station, and sought out the most quiet, darkest place of solace to disappear into.

* * *

A few clicks at Ilya's Pip-Boy showed that Danse had landed them just outside the ArcJet Systems complex. He would have headed off for the Cambridge Police Station, which allowed Ilya to nurture a little hope that she might be able to find him there again, if she ever plucked up the courage to face him. She decided she would go to find him before the raid. Just to say goodbye, if things didn't go well. The notion drowned any strength she had forged and reawakened her depression. Forcing her body to function enough to get back home was going to be a bitch. Luckily, they didn't have too far to walk.

Clay-Crawler seemed to be enjoying his new set of power armour, and had gotten the hang of it a little more, walking confidently, rather than waddling like he was carrying an unpleasant payload in his rear-end. Much like Deacon actually was.

Ilya found her mind wandering in and out of its depression, one hemisphere just focusing on keeping mobile, pushing through the gloom in an almost meditative state, the other hemisphere wallowing freely in her self-loathing. She spared no effort in keeping alert for predators; she couldn't even care less. She would welcome an attempt on her life.

Deacon begged them to stop as they came up on the Drumlin Diner, telling them he would only be a minute with the traders. They watched as he traded a small amount of caps for what appeared to be a pair of black slack pants, and it dawned on Ilya what his mission was. He gave them a motion to wait, then sped off with a roll of newspaper behind the diner for privacy...

Ilya turned away out of courtesy and sighed at the heat of the day, flicking away the sticky strings of hair from her face. It was getting long again, just the right length to tickle between her shoulder-blades when she tried to sleep, or wisped over her shoulders to distract her when she tinkered at the workbench. She would have to ask Piper for a trim again. Or maybe she should just shave it all off to punish herself.

"Whisper?" Clay-Crawler was right beside her, or more, above her in his stolen power armour. She spared him a glance. "Talk now?"

"Fine." She really wasn't in the mood for talking, and hoped her dull tone would discourage him.

His smile was instant, like a child who had just gotten his way. If only his teeth weren't so... raider-like. "Good fight," he began, then pointed skyward. "In sky. Good. Lots of fire. Means spirit people like. Pleased. Not much blood, though. Spirit people like blood more. But fire still good." He nodded his head encouragingly. "Good fight."

Ilya glared beneath a set brow-bone, unimpressed.

The raider blinked excessively in the lack of response, then his eyes darted around in search of more words. "The Dancer not fight with us, now? Not a fighter?"

She removed her glare and settled it on the Wastes, vacant. "No. He won't be fighting with us anymore."

Clay-Crawler hummed in disappointment, and she could see him staring at her through her peripherals. She had caught him staring a lot during their walk home. Why was he so god damned creepy?

"Did the fuck with?"

Her head snapped back. "Excuse me?"

"Did the fuck with The Dancer?" he repeated, as if it was just an ordinary, everyday question one asked over coffee—If she was right about what he was asking, which she was pretty sure she was.

"You're asking if we had sex?" she queried in awe. He nodded excitedly, eyes bulging. "No," she then growled through a disgusted scowl, "and don't ask people questions like that. It's none of your fucking business."

He took on a look of surprise, then bowed his head. "Sorry!"

She sighed and crossed her arms, wishing Deacon would hurry his ass up, literally.

"...Never got to choose fucks..."

Biting off another sigh, Ilya dredged her eyes up once more to look at him. His head was still bowed, like an obedient slave, small, almost beady eyes staring down at the dry land with a well-imbedded pain. She remembered him telling her that he had been one of the leaders' sex-slaves... She had to pity him in that moment. "I'm sorry you had to go through all that..."

"Hate Slay," he said with loathing. "Cruel woman. Evil. Want to kill. When return to Blood Lands, will kill."

Ilya studied him closely for a moment. He was nodding at the ground, more to himself, resigned to his plans, dependent on them. Not much unlike herself. She spied more scars travelling down the side of his neck, but they appeared more like deliberate patterns than battle scars. Crude circles and parallel lines. Who were these people? They sounded enough like traditional raiders, but she was picking up telltale tribal qualities and mystical customs. In other words, creepy as fuck. There was no doubt that Clay-Crawler had come from a world very different from the Commonwealth.

She experienced an inkling of a connection with him, and craved to better understand him. Part of her knew it stemmed from a need to feel close with someone, anyone, to fill the void Danse had left in her. "Do you have family back out there?"

He frowned in thought, then shrugged in the armour. "No know. Not remember. Always fighting. Running. Hiding. More fighting. Killing. Then, was caught. Made slave."

"You said your name was Ethan before you were taken."

"Yes. Ethan. Name of low status. Not one of rank, of earned thing. Skill. Clay-Crawler." He slapped his metal hand to his metal chest proudly, looking up at her with a stern expression. "Best runner. Not give up. Crawl through clay to win."

She nodded in understanding. So that was why he called her Whisper, even though he knew her name was Ilya. He saw it as a title of earned respect, a rite of passage, almost. "You must have been just a boy, before you were enslaved. You don't remember anyone taking care of you? A teacher, or leader?"

A distance formed in his eyes, a fond one that created little creases to frame his eyes in the beginnings of a smile. "Red Claw leaders and healers took care of fighters. Show how to cook Dark Bloods, to eat. Legs and arms best parts." Cannibalism, Ilya thought. Charming. Clay-Crawler continued on. "Show how to keep clean, keep hair away to stop lice, make things, weapons and tools. And fight. Show how to fight. No slaves. No death games. No Dark Blood drinking."

"Dark Blood drinking?" Ilya asked hesitantly.

Clay-Crawler grimaced at his recollection. "From the Dark Blood Sea. Dark Bloods use sea to punish and torture. Must drink from. Taste bad. Give bad illness. Can sometimes kill."

Ilya frowned. "I don't understand. What is the Dark Blood Sea?"

"Uhh," the raider struggled for a way to explain. "Blood with... black mess... thick blackness... from ground. Not remember word."

"Oil?"

"OIL!"

She jerked back in fright at his outburst, then digested the information. The Dark Bloods used a pool of blood and oil to torture their victims? It explained why they went to so much effort to put out the oil fires. They wanted to preserve the oil for their own fucked up use. She wondered if they had any other uses for it, and it also made her wonder where this prototype vault that was detailed in Maxson's briefing file came into everything. Thinking of Maxson brought up another subject she wanted to discuss.

"The Brotherhood, did they treat you well when they were interrogating you?"

Clay-Crawler shrugged dismissively in response. "Give food. Taste funny. Make clean. Ask many questions. Was tired... Boss-man have good beard... and good coat!"

Ilya found herself smiling at that. "Maxson doesn't lack for style, I'll give him that." She then dropped her satire and gave him a sober eye. "Did they hurt you?"

He hummed in thought, eyes turning skyward. "Hurt when they take off cherub." He subconsciously felt at his head.

"Cherub? You call those things cherubs?"

"Spirit people say they are cherubs. Givers of great gifts."

Ilya scoffed, crossing her arms and shaking her head. Yeah, right. Cherubs, sure, real cute things that shoot their arrows through your skull and make you fall in love with radioactive mutations. "As long as the Brotherhood weren't cruel to you."

"Not cruel," he provided eagerly. "But not nice. Boss-man not answer questions, and not smile back... ask many questions about Sight."

Ilya unfolded her arms and felt a chill capture her. Damn it. Scribe Ketway must have passed on what he heard of the Sight to Maxson. "What kind of questions?" she grilled mildly.

"Hmm. What The Sight is. What Sight say of you. What Meek say to leaders of you. Many questions of you."

"Me? He wanted to know about me? Why?" This couldn't be good.

Clay-Crawler tilted his head as if to study his own thoughts, then shrugged. "No know. Face was... worried. I good at faces. Seeing in eyes. But, Boss-man got angry when I not know. Not let me talk to you."

Despite the ramifications, and potential danger to Mama Murphy should the Brotherhood decide to pursue any leads on the Sight, Ilya couldn't help but realise that it sounded suspiciously as though Maxson had been worried for her safety from the Dark Blood leaders. Curious...

Shoes crunched on soil. "Nappy changed, and all ready to go, boss," Deacon announced from behind them. Ilya swung around to regard him, a little absent-minded, then bared him a nod. He had ditched the Field Scribe getup and was donning his typical white t-shirt and dark shades once more, with a fresh pair of slacks, shit-free.

The raider gave them both wide eyes and high brows, which were practically non-existent, as they had been shaved off. "I must call Whisper boss? Not mean to offend!"

"Ah, no," Ilya was quick to correct, calming his momentary panic. "Please don't start calling me boss-lady, or I might just have to kill you."

Clay-Crawler's panic was renewed at that, the many scars across his features seeming to dance as he sought out a way to appease the woman.

Deacon laughed and gave the raider's armour a firm smack on the shoulder. "Chill it, pal. She's just messing with you. From now on, you're a free man. No one is your boss anymore. You do you. When we get back home, we just have a few more questions to ask, then you can decide how you wanna live your life. No strings attached. Sound good?"

The young man seemed to ponder that with a dawning of realisation, then his boyish features hardened into a weathered landscape of trial-borne scars once more. "I fight with Whisper."

Deacon smirked and traded eyes with Ilya. "Another for your collection."

Ilya wondered, as Clay-Crawler looked upon her with those revering eyes, if taking him under her wing was wise. He was so young, barely a man, and so very naive to the outside world. He had the opportunity to make a real life for himself now, so many possibilities lay before him, yet all he wanted to do was fight at her side in a dark world of war. She would be taking on the responsibility of him, and in her own state, she knew it was bound to backfire. How could she deal with him, when she herself was so fucked up that the thought of suicide was a comfort?

Staring back at his youthful gaze, she figured with a dark humour, that he would be the death of her. But fuck it. He wanted to fight, and all she had left to live for was to fight.

* * *

Dogmeat was the first to welcome them home, but Hancock took a narrow second place, having spotted their approach of the bridge from his customary spot down by the river. He sauntered across their path at a leisurely pace. "So, this is our raider, huh? All nicely wrapped in power armour, too. Now all he needs is a ribbon, and he's set."

Deacon took charge of the introductions while Ilya mutely observed from the sidelines. "Hancock, meet Clay-Crawler, formerly Ethan. Clay, meet Mayor John Hancock, formerly human. Now, would you politely exit your power armour so you can shake the good mayor's hand?"

Clay-Crawler grew hesitant, looking to Deacon with a sheepish face. "Have to? Like armour."

"Uh, well," Deacon scratched the back of his neck, "I guess you don't have to. Just, shake gently. You know how to shake hands, right?"

"Shake," Clay-Crawler nodded, reaching a giant hand out to Hancock, who took it in good humour.

"I assume you have a leash for this one, right?" the ghoul teased, ending the shake on a firm note.

Deacon slid a glance to Ilya before answering. "Boss-lady over there worked her charm on him, leash and all." She eyed him narrowly, but he just grinned back.

"I can say I know how that feels," Hancock joined, sending a wink her way.

She knew they were only teasing, and not implying anything sexist—it came with the territory of being considered 'one of the boys.' But her mood was so dampened that she just couldn't return the banter in her usual character. She managed to fling Hancock a humoured smile, but remained at a distance, leaning up against the bridge post.

The ghoul didn't seem to notice her detachment, but did notice something else. "Crewcut fall behind?" And her gloom deepened even further at the mentioning of Danse, but luckily, Deacon answered for her.

"It's a long story, Hancock, and a sore one. We might not be seeing him again."

Deacon's uncharacteristically sombre tone gave Hancock pause for thought. One look at Ilya, and the mirth riding on his features was altered into concern. "You have a falling out of some kind?"

"Some kind," Ilya echoed him without meeting his eye. He was observing her intently now, black eyes seeking answers. He and Danse had made a point of staying clear of one another to avoid unsettling the peace in Sanctuary, but Ilya was well aware of the mutual animosity between them. In fact, Danse had a problem with nearly everyone here, and they too with him. She suspected the news of his departure would be taken with secret celebration. She didn't want to deal with all that right now.

"Would you guys mind getting Clay settled in? I've got some things to take care of." Not waiting for their confirmation, she strode for the centre of the growing settlement, wishing the despair dragging on her heels would subside so she could be proactive in preparing for the raid. She would need a session of Jet if she wanted that to happen.

As expected, Mama Murphy was plopped in her special chair outside the main shack, stirring some concoction of a stew in an oversized pot over a small fire. Whatever it was, it smelled good. The eccentric old lady had quite the collection of recipes hidden up her sleeve, and had taken on the position of head chef in Sanctuary. No one was complaining. Even Dogmeat liked her cooking, Ilya noticed as his ears perked up and his nose went into sniffing-duty overdrive beside her.

"Mama Murphy?"

"Hmm?" The old lady peered up at the mentioning, glassy eyes squinting at Ilya's form. "Oh, hey there, kid. Didn't see you come over. If you're here to check in, you got no need to fuss. Mama Murphy's as good as her word. No more chems. And no more Sight, either."

Ilya gave a gentle smile and approached. "I know, Preston keeps tabs on you. I wanted to ask about the Sight, if you know, or used to know anyone else that had it."

Mama Murphy took a good hard look at Ilya for a second, then inhaled deeply, seeming to dock with ancient memories. "There was another young woman I met, a long time ago, back when I was a young woman myself. You may not believe it, but I had a good go of being a mercenary in my youth, got myself into all sort of situations, and all sorts of trouble, too. I think it's safe to say that those were the most exciting years of my life..." Ilya slowly folded her arms and exercised her patience, the woman's drawl matching up to its usual. "One time, we were on a bounty for this young woman, and were taking her back to collect. Oh, she was a troubled thing, pregnant, and all skin and bones, with eyes on a face that seemed too small for them. I felt sorry for her. She was all alone in the world with a little one on the way, and it just felt wrong what we were doing.

"One night, I went to go talk to her while I was on watch. She didn't talk too much, I don't know if it was because she was too scared to, or she just didn't know how to. But I wanted to give her the Sight, just to see what I was delivering her to." Mama Murphy's eyes grew wide as she recalled the vision. "Oh, it was awful, kid. There were chains, digging into flesh, rope burning against skin, a stinging in the throat, and fire! Fire in the stomach, surging up all the way out the mouth. No air. I couldn't breathe. Everything was burning. And then, a sea of black!" Her wrinkled hands gestured out across the imaginary scope of it. "It was thick and clung to the skin, and I could taste it. I still recall the taste even today. It had... that iron tang of blood, with the sharp burn of oil."

"The Dark Blood Sea," Ilya whispered, squatting down in front of the chair in rapt attention.

"It was horrible, kid. Truly horrible. I set that poor girl free the moment it ended, and I left my company. They wouldn't have taken too kindly to me losing the bounty on watch, so I figured I'd go with her, make sure she got somewhere safe to care for that little one." A spike of longing hit Ilya to hold baby Shaun in her arms again, but she cast it aside as Mama Murphy continued. "Eventually we came across a travelling caravan, and I had enough caps to buy us both a spot for the road. That was when the young woman trusted me enough to tell me her name. Celeste. I hadn't told her what the Sight showed me, it was too horrible, and I don't think she would have been able to take it. But she knew I had the Sight, because she had it too. She said she recognised that look in my eyes when I had my vision. She told me that was why she was on the run, to get away from bad men who wanted to use the Sight for evil. Such a poor thing."

"What happened to her?" Ilya encouraged.

But Mama Murphy shook her head sadly and heaved a sigh. "I don't know, kid. One morning, I woke up, and she was just gone. I never saw her again."

Ilya nodded in understanding and then withdrew her gaze to mull that over. She hadn't been expecting to hear all that from Mama Murphy. In fact, she hadn't been expecting much at all, the thought to ask whether the woman knew anyone was purely by sudden impulse. But this brought forth new insight. What if Celeste was Meek's or Eye-Daddy's mother? Were Meek and Eye-Daddy siblings? If so, then the Dark Bloods must have found Celeste again and taken her back to the Rad Lands. Which means she probably met the demise detailed in Mama Murphy's vision after all... Ilya shuddered at the thought of going through that herself.

But this all gave her potential leverage with the Dark Bloods, or at least the spirit people. She could claim to have known Celeste, and play on their mystical beliefs into convincing them her forces had the Sight, and were more powerful than they could imagine, therefore, unbeatable. It was a loose plan in case negotiations ever came into play in this war, anyway. She doubted it.

"Now how about some Jet, for old time's sake," Mama Murphy chirped, displaying her decayed teeth in a wicked grin.

Ilya shot her a warning glare. "Mama Murphy, you gave me your word you would get clean."

"Oh, I'm just pulling your leg," the old coot then cackled loudly, giving herself a coughing fit, "the Jet's a little too hardy for these old bones, anyway. Would put me in the ground with just a taste."

"Right." Ilya stood, still eyeing the woman. "Well, thank you for telling me about Celeste. It was a great help."

"No problem, kid. You take care, and stay out of trouble out there, now."

 _Don't count on it,_ Ilya thought as she walked away, mind reaching out for the Jet and the most quiet, darkest place of solace to disappear into.

* * *

Sleep eluded him. Danse tossed and turned on the bunk in a repeating pattern, yet no matter how he positioned himself, sleep refused to grace him. He was sure the officer above him was about set to jump down and smack him a solid one if he didn't quit rattling the entire bunk around in his restlessness.

Sleep was a familiar foe. He knew it was common for most soldiers to battle with sleep on occasions, but his battle was showing no signs of coming to a ceasefire. If he was fortunate, he would catch a few hours here and there, but never anything substantial. He often wondered how he remained sharp in the field. Dandy Boy Apples, he then thought...

Finally, Danse grumbled something nearing on a curse and rolled off the bunk, roughly swiping a hand through his hair and grabbing at his neatly folded uniform. His hand came back a little gritty. Probably should wash his hair sometime. Wasteland duty made that less of a priority than it was when serving on the Prydwen.

Once zipped up, the paladin made his way downstairs as quietly as his footsteps would allow. Haylen was nowhere to be seen in the lobby. Probably getting some well-earned rest, he speculated with relief. He didn't want to have to explain his reasons for being up and about. With laser rifle in hand, he meandered across the lobby and down the hall until he descended the stairs for the back bay. There was a power armour station and workbench in there, along with a radio, and two exit points. It was near enough perfect for his standards, and had served him well on a sleepless night many a time.

Sighing, he switched on the radio and brushed off the dust, then greeted the weapons workstation, placing down his rifle and giving it the once-over before considering his actions.

Instead, all he could think of was Ilya—Harper.

" _It's all over, but the crying..."_

Danse slanted his head to eye the radio for a moment, before he blinked and tried to regain focus on the task at hand. After losing his rifle back in the Rad Lands, his second model of his personal modification still had yet to be properly tuned and updated to his preferred specs of the previous model. Well, really, that had been model two, and this was model three. He had given his first to Harper after their successful sweep of the ArcJet Systems.

" _...and nobody's crying but me_

 _Friends all over know I'm trying_

 _To forget about how much I care for you..."_

This was ridiculous. Why was a simple song affecting him so much? Groaning, Danse leaned into the bench to stretch out the building tension in his muscles. He felt the temper he had worked so diligently to melt down begin to mount once more. But it was just one song. It would end soon.

" _It's all over, but the dreaming_

 _Poor little dreams that keep trying to come true_

 _It's all over, but the crying_

 _And I can't get over crying over you..."_

Utterly ridiculous. Of all the songs to play, it had to be this. The rifle. It needed tweaking. He needed to adjust the intake of the fusion cell like Ilya had suggested—Harper!

The song picked up its tempo. _"It's all over, but the cry—"_

Danse gave it a strangled growl and lashed out with a backhand, sweeping it off the table to clatter to the ground and split its casing.

" _And nobody's crying but me"_

He stomped over and flicked the control off, but to his dismay, the node was broken, and the song bounced on.

" _Friends all over know I'm trying_

 _To forget about how much I care for you"_

"What the—" he cut himself off angrily, mashing at the button until he resorted to manually disabling the damned thing with his boot. Within a few stomps, he was lost in it, stomping and stomping, crushing it with all his might and all his pent up anger, at the song, at Harper, at himself, until the poor thing was nought but a wretched heap of sparking scrap. At this point, his vision was red, and he was not in the mood for mercy, picking up the scrap and launching it across the room, where it met its violent end against the wall. It spat out one more spark of life, then its spirit ascended in smoke.

Danse stood panting for a moment, the silence in the room sounding empty, just how he wanted to be right now. He slumped into a chair and hung his head, but he would not be crying.

* * *

 _ **\- A longer one, this time. I'm not sure whether people prefer a quick read or a longer one. Please let me know your thoughts so I can shape it to your liking :)**_

 _ **\- Really enjoyed the opportunity to dig deeper with these two again, especially Danse. His evolution is something I really enjoy writing, and I hope I'm doing him justice despite having him suffer through all this shit lol. There is still a lot more to come for him, evolution-wise. Same with Ilya and Clay-Crawler. For Ilya, I will warn now that things will get a lot darker for her, but I'll forewarn at the beginning of those chapters, for people who are uncomfortable with it. Clay, I never intended him to become a permanent side-character, but he grew on me really quickly and I've heard the same with a few of you guys, too, so that's been awesome :) I will definitely be building on his character a lot in the future. Anyway, just thought I'd share my thoughts on where I am planning on takings things :)**_


	17. Combat Ready

**Chapter 17: Combat Ready**

* * *

" _Danse."_

 _He felt the radiation deep in his core, the taste of it, the smell, the sound, the burn. In the land of red, it was a presence, something tangible, something sentient. He moved, and it followed. To escape would be to give in to it._

 _Radioactive dust and red rock gave way to a path he must tread, distant battlecries overpowering the sounds of the battlefield. The roar of vertibirds, the zap of laser discharge, the clashing of metal on metal; all of it he knew. But the dust obscured it._

 _His boots scuffed through sand as his legs pumped faster, needing to break through the red, and when he did, he knew none of it._

 _Cloaked men and women collided in a chaotic brawl, reduced to barbaric methods. Machetes severed limbs, knives punctured vital organs, primitive spears stabbed out whole chunks of flesh, even bows sent arrows to pierce from afar. Rocks were thrown, bashed with, hands and fingers gripped and gouged, teeth shredded, feet stomped. The battle grew as his eye extended out in the distance, the vast mass of bodies writhing and tearing through blood and gore for nothing but fury and survival._

" _Danse."_

 _He turned. It was her. She was cloaked just like them, face obscured like her figure was in the red glow. He called to her, or tried to, but she was whisked away in the dust._

 _Her dust left a trail of blood in the sand, burning it black. He followed, right into the heart of the battle, shoving his way through the mangle of the dead and dying, the bloody and baring. The screams were muted to him, the force of their rage unable to touch him, like he was only a ghost passing through. So he passed through like a madman, keeping to that black trail, eyes scouting the skies wrought with thunder and lightning scarring through the red._

 _Until finally, there she was. On the outskirts of the battle. Waiting._

" _Danse."_

 _He cried out her name, but his voice was mute. Staggering closer, he could see blood weeping out from under her hood, like she was crying tears of it. It began to pour heavily, dripping down her jaw and onto the sand, where it sizzled into ash. Then it got even worse, her cloak growing saturated with the redness. The sand surrounding her darkened and hissed in its burn. He had to tend to the wounds, stop the bleeding, keep her alive._

 _But the sentient radiation congested into his core, rooting him to the sand, throbbing in his head and crunching in his chest like a heart attack that brought him to his knees. He could feel his skin blistering raw and flaking away into ash. His hands were ash._

 _Then, she came at him, face shadowed and drowned by blood, a combat knife in her rigid claw. There was blood, screaming, endless, echoing, all around him, a slash of motion and a burst of pain. Then, she was down, in the sand, and the radiation released him._

" _Danse."_

 _Her hand was on the knife's handle, the handle on the blade, the blade in her body. She held it firmly in her chest, in her heart, even more blood pumping out to burn the sand black. She should be dead._

 _Why? Why did she do this to herself? Was the radiation that unbearable? It had told her to kill him, so why couldn't she? Why kill herself? She was a soldier. She was supposed to be strong. Why did she do it?_

" _I couldn't let you die..."_

 _The ashes of his hands were lost to the winds as they rose to push back the hood over her face. She had no face. A black void existed instead, seeming to draw him down into its depths as it vomited up blood. He fell into it, lost in it._

" _Danse."_

 _He fell. And fell. And fell._

" _I couldn't let you die..."_

Paladin Danse fell out of his sleep with a violent jolt, hand instinctively flinging out for his rifle which he brought to bear on the rising sun. He waited like that for several moments, taking in his surroundings, collecting his awareness, before he allowed the adrenaline to subside and his muscles to uncoil from their held state. He was out in the Wastes with his patrol team. In the Commonwealth, not the Rad Lands.

He remembered to breathe and let each limb fall back against the bedroll, head making a dull thump on the straw pillow. Sweat was pooled into every crevice and drenched his uniform, darkening the material and sticking to his skin uncomfortably. He was accustomed to that, however. The majority of his waking moments always came with a layer of sweat.

" _I couldn't let you die..."_

He trailed a hand down his face and sighed heavily. The words were still so loud, he felt they pulled him back there, to the red land. What a disturbing dream. How his subconscious liked to torture him. Those demented raiders, the nauseating radiation, the suffocating heat from fire trapped in the humid atmosphere. And Ilya. What did it mean? She wouldn't really do something so stupid as to take her own life, surely? Not when she had so much left in her, so much left to give and do. His memory drifted back to that night out in the cabin, where she had confessed her suicidal thoughts to him, and thanked him for being there. But she had many allies now, many friends, she didn't need him anymore. And besides, he knew she was stronger than even she thought she was. Surely she wouldn't?

He had to stop this. Harper was strong. Lamenting over everything was doing him no good. Discipline was the only thing to see him back to his former honour. He squinted at the sunrise again, and determined that he had overslept, or more accurately, that his squad had allowed him to.

He was up in an instant and on the warpath for Knight-Sergeant Muller, who was sitting in the vertibird's load eating from a can of Pork n' Beans. "Sergeant," he hailed as mildly as his annoyance would allow, "may I ask why I wasn't woken earlier? Half the morning is already wasted."

Muller swallowed a mouthful and gave Danse a look that was borderline patronising. "We thought you could do with some decent sleep, sir. You seemed a bit... strung out on patrol yesterday. Not that we're blaming you, losing a partner is never easy. Not meaning to offend, of course."

Danse sent a brow up at him and accompanied it with a deep scowl. "'We?' Sergeant, I don't have time for gossip, and I don't appreciate my men speculating about my state of mind behind my back. We're running on limited time to track Harper down, and Maxson won't take kindly to knowing we lost her because you allowed our search effort to gossip and slack. A deviation was not your call to make. So if I seem tense, Sergeant, it's only due to dealing with your incompetence." Leaving a stunned Muller to his breakfast, the disgruntled paladin strode over to his power armour, mounted, and rallied the squad in loud barks, which startled them out of their lazy morning.

"Have your rations finished and be ready to break camp in T-minus five. We're going to sweep the terrain north of here inch by inch! No slacking!"

The squad chorused their acknowledgements and set about shoving down their breakfast and packing their gear. They had mopped up the last of the super mutant resistance in the area last night, and had found no trace of Harper in doing so. As it should be. As far as Danse knew, she had never set foot near this place.

He watched Muller assign two soldiers to board the vertibird on air patrol. He suspected the sergeant had hopes in not finding Harper; the two had never seen eye-to-eye, but Danse now wondered if Muller would go so far as to deliberately stall their progress in locating her. Well, their false progress. Or perhaps the sergeant's ploy this morning had simply been to discredit him before his men. Danse was well aware that Harper's rogue status cast him in a bad light, and that the bar was set high to regain his dignity. He wasn't afraid of some hard work; it was a humiliation that he deserved. But he had never dealt with any personal vendetta's against him within the Brotherhood before. It both disappointed him, and concerned him.

As the search effort got underway, his thoughts once again revolved around Ilya. He suddenly wondered if—once she had lead the assault on Dunwich Borers—she intended to return to the Brotherhood. They still needed her in their mission against the Institute. What if she refused to aid? What if she went back to her son and aided the Institute in an attempt to talk him down, or worse, her compassion for the synths impelled her to fight against the Brotherhood? He had let her mercy for the machines slide, partly because it only led to disagreements, and partly because he had talked himself into believing that sparing a few here and there wouldn't detract from the shutdown of the Institute at its core.

But, even worse than all that was the possibility that she would never even make it that far to decide her fate, or that of the Commonwealth.

* * *

She was going to die tomorrow. She felt it in her bones. Ilya stalked down Sanctuary's road, overseeing the combat readiness of the invasion force. The Minutemen had really pulled through. Ronnie Shaw had arrived a few nights ago with a substantial force at her back, enough to officially be labelled a platoon, or more. Ilya was impressed, to say the least, and she observed them in satisfaction as they camped out around Sanctuary, maintaining their weapons and armour in preparation. However, she wasn't qualified or experienced enough to direct that many soldiers in battle, and the nerves had struck her hard, but Ronnie had come in handy for that part, and together, with a little help from a few other tacticians within the Minutemen, they had laid out a battle-plan, using Ilya's earlier scouting of the quarry for reference.

Still, it all seemed rough, the guns-blazing tactics of a rag-tag rebellion, and she wished more than ever that Danse was here. He would know exactly how to approach, who to put where, what both their own and their enemies' weakest and strongest points were. He would have taken charge of the entire operation, and she would have been more than happy to hand it all over to him. She missed him like hell.

"How about a pink paintjob? Out here, pink is known as the colour of sexual prowess. The women dig it," Deacon was saying to Clay-Crawler over at the power armour station. Ilya shielded her eyes from the sun with a forearm and looked over. The two had been joined by the hip ever since being here, and had busied themselves in decking out Clay's armour to the max for the raid. With the help of Sturges' mechanical expertise, it was now reinforced in true raider style, with steel bars shielding the helmet and chestplate. The Brotherhood of Steel insignia had been scratched off and replaced by crude red claw marks, much like that on Clay's chin, and other anonymous designs had been literally scraped into the metal. Ilya made her way over.

"Ili!" Deacon ushered her in, casually slumping an arm over her shoulders. "I think we might have the finished product here. So, what do you think? Clay's gonna be one heck of a raider-bashing machine, am I right?"

She took on his weight by leaning on a hip, gauging the power armour in its menacing glory. "I like it. Just make sure you save some raiders for me out there," she directed at Clay-Crawler, who was grinning from ear to ear.

"Kill only what Whisper tells to," he said earnestly. He was actually wearing some decent clothing for probably the first time in his life—a harness, which still displayed his many scars and scattered tattoos, albeit his protruding bones took away from the effect. But he was looking much better, with more colour to his skin, less shadowed rings under his eyes, and a new light in them that spoke of his regenerating health. Ilya often wondered on what exactly the specimen had done to him, aside from a slight gain in strength and reflexes, and a higher resistance to radiation. She had watched him and Deacon having a sprint-race down the main road one time, and while the raider had certainly left the spy in his dust, there didn't seem to be anything inhuman about it.

It left her feeling on edge.

"Only thing left is a snazzy paintjob," Deacon prattled at her side. "I've been suggesting pink, you know, the colour to show a man's power, but he doesn't seem to like that idea. Tell him it's a good idea?"

Ilya quirked an eyebrow at Deacon, then blinked to Clay-Crawler. Deacon had been taking full advantage of the raider's naivety of the outside world and his gullible nature in general, managing to convince him of all sorts of things that he just found irresistibly hilarious. "Deacon, don't be such a dick," she shot down.

He clicked his tongue in disappointment and removed his arm from around her. "Aw, come on, it would have been funny! Kill-sport." He stood there pouting, so she jabbed his ribs to cheer him up and earned a tickled chuckle from him.

"Colour with blood of enemies," Clay-Crawler spoke up, and rather darkly. His finger traced through the claw insignia he had scratched in, the motions delicate and wistful. "Avenge Red Claws. Mark armour with kills. Decorate with bones and teeth of slain."

Both Ilya and Deacon fell silent, the shift in the air sudden and jarring. Their eyes followed Clay-Crawler as he reached for something leaning up against the power armour station, producing a modified baseball bat complete with nails and what appeared to be the blade of a serrated combat knife protruding from the tip.

"Kill many with club," Clay-Crawler said with a steady gaze. Suddenly he was less the clueless man-boy and more the brutal warrior.

Ilya now had no doubts of his capabilities in close-quarters, but this raid would be fought at range, if all things went to plan. "Do you know how to use a gun, Clay?"

"Ah, yes, gun!" His features brightened again in acknowledgement, going back behind the power armour station to retrieve a rusty pipe pistol. He held it out for her to examine, barrel down.

But Ilya didn't need to examine it. "I think we can get you something with a little more kick. Come with me." With a flick of her chin, he fell in on her heel with avid curiosity. Of course, Deacon tagged along, too.

She led the two toward her shack and past a milling group of Minutemen, who, much to her chagrin, hailed her as their general. The interior of her wooden shack was nothing special, really, more of a mess than anything else. Weapons were scattered haphazardly about, armour pieces strewn on the floor near an open case stuffed with more armour, ammunition and weapon mods overflowing from a metal box, and a pile of magazines and comics thrown into one corner. There was a bed, a red sofa, and a lantern set on a table. That was it.

"Don't mind the mess," Ilya tossed over her shoulder nonchalantly.

"Never do," Deacon tossed back just as nonchalantly. That made her wonder how often he snuck in here like a greasy scavver. Probably looking for her stash of chems. She knew better than to keep it here.

Ilya stepped over to a substantial weapons case and flipped the lid with the toe of her boot.

"Hoarder, much?" Deacon commented, looking down into the collection with overwhelmed hands on hips.

"Very much," Ilya agreed guiltily. The tangle of weapons in there was enough to make even K.L.E.O in Goodneighbour jealous. "A girl can never pack too much heat."

Clay-Crawler was drawn into the pile with wide eyes, almost drooling. "Whisper..." was all he gasped.

She grinned over at him. "Go on. Take your pick."

He looked to her to check she wasn't joking, then stood over the weapons with utter bewilderment, clearly not even knowing where to start. Then, of course, he went for the biggest in plain sight—a Fatman. The manic grin that crept up onto his face was suddenly terrifying.

"Ah, no, no, no," Ilya quickly reached for the weighty weapon of mass destruction and pulled it away from his grasp. "Maybe not this one. Let's start with something more practical." She handed the nuke launcher off to Deacon, who almost keeled over from the weight, and then reached back into the weapons case for another gun. "Combat shotgun," she announced, handling the weapon with familiarity to show the young raider. "Virtually no aim required, fast rate of fire, large mag, and best of all, maximum damage at close-range. Perfect for the raider that likes to get up-close and personal."

"Hold up," Deacon interrupted from across the shack, scooping up another weapon. "What in the hell is this thing?"

"Oh yeah, I found that ages ago in ArcJet with... with Danse," Ilya provided, stumbling in her words for a moment at the mentioning of Danse and the twinge it brought. "It's called a Junk Jet. Fires nearly anything that can fit in the receiver, with a decent force, too. I actually killed a bloatfly just down the stream with a teddy bear."

Deacon quickscoped her a look of disbelief. "You serious?"

"Yeah," she confirmed, all honest smiles. "Wanna try it?"

So the three of them trotted down the stream with a duffel bag of junk each, on the lookout for any pests that usually scurried around Sanctuary's borders. Hancock and MacCready, who must have been smoking together out by the river as per usual, were watching them from afar, along with a few of the nearby Minutemen, all wondering what the troublemakers were up to, no doubt. Deacon decided it would be funny to moon them all, while he had the chance.

Ilya spotted a swarm of bloodbugs and whistled. "Over there."

Loading up the Junk Jet's oversized chamber with a teddy bear, Deacon braced and took aim. "Bear's away!" he shouted as the stuffed toy was launched with a surprisingly powerful velocity and sent right at a bloodbug. The insect was clobbered entirely and thrust to a great distance, limbs snapping off and left behind. Deacon guffawed in the hilarity of it, slapping a thigh. "Did you guys just see that!?"

"What the hell _is_ that thing?" MacCready shouted from across the river.

Soon, nearly everyone was across the river, lining up for a go with the Junk Jet and aiming for trees, having long since eradicated all nearby hostile targets. Cait's laughter was the loudest—though Clay-Crawler came in a close second with his psychotic cackling—and it took some persuading to get her to give someone else a turn. Nick declared it a work of art, saying he wished he had it when hunting down Eddie Winter so he could wipe the grin off his smarmy mug with a rubber plunger. Preston, of course, suggested every settlement should get one each to save on ammunition. Even Strong found the weapon interesting, giggling deeply as a human skull swallowed an unsuspecting black crow, nothing left but a puff of feathers.

Ilya smiled at the gathering and watched it all go down with a fond warmth in her chest, proud to be going into battle with all these people tomorrow, proud of the growing camaraderie between them all, proud of their unflinching loyalty to her. But as time went on, her smile slowly waned, because Danse wasn't there with them.

* * *

The weather was turning, a thick murk gathering in the skies that gradually drifted down to mist over the land. It was all as grey and miserable as her mood. Ilya pulled on some road leathers and shrouded herself with a winter coat to keep warm, drawing up the hood from the drizzle of rain.

Deacon was at her side, taking the same cold-weather precautions in a winter jacket and jeans. "You sure you wanna do this?" he asked her as she clipped her holster around a thigh and slipped into a shoulder-holster to sling her hunting rifle in. "What if he decides to turn you in?"

Ilya slotted her combat knife into her boot. "I have to see him again," she admitted, though keeping a stony expression. "I can't leave things the way we did."

Deacon was surveying her carefully through shaded eyes. "You're hoping he's cooled off and changed his mind in the downtime, aren't you." It was a rhetorical question. So she didn't answer. He didn't press it.

Walking the road, the settlement's atmosphere was very different from earlier in the day. With nightfall only a few hours from its approach, reality had set in, and everyone was going through their eve of the battle musings. The mood was like a pandemic that had swept through the settlement, but the quiet comfort soldiers lent to soldiers kept them all moored to their stability. Ilya couldn't help but feel guilt build, and the responsibility to see them through tomorrow was gaining in its weight on her shoulders. The only bad-side—and it was a big bad-side—to fighting alongside friends was the fear of losing them. She had a sudden sense that she was in over her head.

Before the two could get very far, Codsworth bobbed across their path, his gait and manner somehow translating as hesitant. "May I accompany you, mum?"

Ilya gave him a subduing smile. "Yes, of course, Codsworth. But we aren't doing anything exciting, just a short hike to the police station."

"Oh, well, bother," he lied. Ilya knew full well that he hated the adventures she liked to call 'exciting,' despite the fact that he was actually pretty handy in a melee. "But I would still love the chance to tag along, if you wouldn't mind the extra company, of course?"

"She said yes, Codsworth," Deacon whispered as if Ilya couldn't hear. "Take what you can, when you can."

They set out for the police station at a brisk pace, aiming to race the daylight before it yielded to the night. On arrival in Cambridge, they cleared the immediate vicinity of feral ghouls, then found a place to camp out in a store while Deacon would go in to ask for Danse, to keep Ilya from detection.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Ilya asked as she watched Deacon shrug off his backpack and tug out an orange Brotherhood uniform. He didn't mind undressing in front of her, either.

"Going in, in style," he answered, zipping up and fidgeting around the crotch region for adjustment.

"I thought we agreed that you would just ask for him on my behalf, that you were a worried friend of mine and were wondering if he knew where I was."

Deacon took off his wig and replaced his sunglasses with a pair of combat goggles. "Where's the fun in that?"

Ilya could only grizzle as he took off for the police station, hoping he wouldn't start a firefight and force her to come and rescue him. It had happened before, when he tried to disguise himself as a Super Mutant. She really hoped he wouldn't go through with his Mister. Handy plans someday.

Codsworth seemed to be summoned by her thoughts, jumping at the chance for her attention. "Miss Ilya? May I have a moment of your time?"

She granted it with a smile, wiping off some ghoul blood from the robot's bulbous hull. "Sure, Codsworth. What's up?"

His limbs dithered slightly in his delay. "Well... I know the situation with young Shaun must not have quite turned out to your liking and it's a bit of a touchy subject—pardon me if my bringing this up seems brash, ma'am—but... well, I have been meaning to ask, but just haven't been able to bring myself to do it... I was wondering if my seeing Shaun would be at all possible? It has been so very long since seeing the little bundle of joy, and I do very much miss him..."

"Oh, Codsworth... I..." Ilya faltered, her shame overriding her. She hadn't even spared much thought to how it had affected him, she had been too focused on how it had affected her, and everything else in between. Robot or not, he had proven to her, from the moment she met him again after escaping the vault, that things affected him almost just like any organic. He wasn't immune to emotional trauma. He had been as much a parent to Shaun as she and Nate had been, of course he would be traumatized by the loss. How could she be so selfish? Danse was right.

"I'm sorry, Codsworth, I shouldn't have kept you in the dark about Shaun like this, I just... no, there's no excuse. I was an ass, and I'm sorry." She took a deep breath and amassed her courage. "Shaun is... well he's grown up, now. After he was stolen by Kellogg, I was put back in cryo for longer than I thought. He's an old man, older than me, and now he's the Director of the Institute." She issued the words so crisply, so steadily, she surprised even herself. The past few days must have given her time to adjust to the truth.

Codsworth took a moment to swallow that. "Shaun is... Oh, I'm so sorry, mum. This must be so hard for you. Poor little Shaun, growing up without his mother and father in such a horrible world. It pains me to think of it. I suppose he won't even remember me, he was just a dot when I cared for him."

"I'm sorry, too, Codsworth," Ilya soothed, reaching a cold hand out to place against his thrumming warm hull. She drew comfort from that simple contact, feeling tears sting the backs of her eyes. So maybe she hadn't adjusted yet, after all. The robot butler sank slightly in his height and just hovered there, seeming to draw comfort from the contact, too. They stayed like that for a long while in the rain, until Ilya finally gave his hull a gentle pat, and then found a dry place to hunker down and wait for Deacon, pulling her hood closer around her face for the warmth.

Deacon reappeared not long after, drenched and with a sympathetic cast. Ilya prepared herself for the bad news she had been expecting; Danse had told him to go away, not wanting anything more to do with her.

"He's not there."

"What?" She sat up, sending him a confused frown.

"Scribe Haylen, you know her? Cute little thing with a tiny nose? She said she knew you. Danse is off apparently looking for you. She wouldn't tell me where he is. 'Classified.'" He animated the quote with two fingers on each hand.

But, he would know exactly where to find her... then she realised what was happening. He was covering for her. Still. Even though he hated her. She didn't know what to make of that... He was probably doing it to cover for himself, more so than her. That must be it. "Okay..." was all she could think of saying.

"Hey," Deacon stepped over and squatted beside her, a hand on her shoulder, "I know you guys were good friends, but if he can't understand why you did what you did, then is he really worth it?" She chewed the inside of her lip and didn't respond. Deacon's hand squeezed at her shoulder. "I know that when it comes down to it, you won't support the Brotherhood, and he's never going to accept that. The guy _is_ the Brotherhood. You can't change what's in someone's blood. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, to part ways now before it hurts even more later down the road."

Ilya sighed. Part of her knew he was right. But the other part... it felt hurt, abandoned, despite the fact that she had no right to feel like that. She was the one who hurt Danse, he had every right to be pissed at her. Confusion at her own mind drew her hands up to press at her forehead. "Damn it..."

"Don't worry, mum. I feel certain that Paladin Danse will eventually come around," Codsworth attempted. "Shall I fetch some Dandy Boy Apples to hang out on the front sign?"

* * *

Her hair smelled like rain and gun fumes as it was manipulated around her shoulders. She liked it.

"You know, you could have at least washed your hair before asking me to cut it," Piper complained as she ran a brush through its damp mass.

"I stood out in the rain for a few minutes, didn't I?"

Piper scoffed and snipped. "Why don't you just shave it all off, since you don't seem to care much about it?"

"I _have_ been thinking about it."

The snipping ceased, and Piper leaned around with gauging eyes to glimpse Ilya's face. "Oh, you're serious," she discovered, somewhat in horror. "Really? You wanna shave all this off? Well, if you wanna go for the raider look, you go, girl, but I like your hair. I mean, I _would,_ if you actually bothered to wash it on occasion." She continued to snip at the length, nimble fingers working quickly.

"Perhaps Mademoiselle would benefit from a hairstyle such as mine?" Curie proposed from across the red sofa, accent wrapping her words pleasantly. They were in Ilya's shack, and Piper had just finished trimming the synth's hair. "I find it very practical, while still maintaining a feminine aspect."

"I would have to cut it more often to keep it from growing out of its shape," Ilya rebuffed.

Curie hummed. "That is a valid point. Perhaps I should shave my hair, too?"

"Well I'll just shave mine off too and we can all be bald like Deacon and wear wigs," Piper joined in with animated sarcasm. All three laughed.

The shack door swung open. "Did I hear my name in here?" Deacon stuck his head in. "Ladies! Lookin' good! You know, if you really want it that bad, all you gotta do is ask. I'd even be open to a ménage à trois. Or... Curie, what's the French word for foursome?"

"Buzz off, Deacon," Piper tried swatting him away until she resorted to threatening with her scissors. "Girls only."

He squealed away from her snipping strike. "Gah! Geez, lady. Alright, alright, don't strain yourself. I just came with a message, is all. Head Butcher Strong says 'barbeque done' so come and grab some before he eats it all. Oh and Ilya, that Minutelady, uhh, what's-er-face, wants a word."

Ronnie Shaw, Ilya deduced. She met the woman out by the entrance to Sanctuary, sitting on the steps of one of the many guard towers. "Ronnie?"

"Hey there, General," the hardy woman spoke with gruff warmth. She stood to give a snappy informal salute. "Don't mean to keep ya, I know how important it is to bond with your team on the eve of battle, but I had a thought and needed to run it by you. Now, we decided against attackin' at night to avoid any run-ins with the nasty night predators, I know, but really, with our numbers, what would want to attack us, anyway? Somethin' with a few marbles loose, that's what. I'm thinkin' we move at the earliest of hours, while it's still dark. Gives us a lesser chance of bein' spotted. What'ya think?"

Ilya folded her arms in consideration, coming to a nod. "Alright, if you think it's for the best, I trust your judgment." _I wonder if Danse would approve..._ She shook him from her mind. "I'll spread the word for everyone to get an early night."

"Don't you worry yourself with that, General, I'll have my men take care of spreading the word," Ronnie said with a dismissive gesture. "You just make sure you get yourself a big meal tonight, and spend some quality time with your crew."

So Ilya did just that, and actually managed to go clean of the Jet, at least until it came time for her head to hit the pillow. She found the chems helped her to sleep, and stay asleep, fighting off most of the nightmares for her. She endured only one, of raiders killing Danse and mutilating him in their rabid way. At 3am, Dogmeat woke her with a sloppy tongue to the cheek, and the memory of the nightmare seared an imprint in her brain. She rolled off the bed, chowed down a plate of food someone had snuck in, slipped into her vault jumpsuit for the fire and energy resistant material, and strapped up in shadowed leather armour. Locking and loading was second nature, and she was armed in little time with her reliable 10mm, a blade in her boot, the essential grenades on her belt, her modded hunting rifle, and her Righteous Authority laser rifle from Danse.

When she stepped outside, people were up and about, mobilizing in the cold morning air with fire in their eyes. Many sent firm nods her way as they moved to gather at the bridge. The non-combatants were seeing off the soldiers with words of luck and empowerment. It was an eerie moment, like so many others she had experienced before going to war.

She was going to die today. She could feel it in her bones.

Dogmeat whined beside her leg for her attention, and she knelt to his level, clutching his scruffy mane in her hands and briefly pressing her forehead to his before pulling away and gazing deep into his loving eyes.

"Ready to fuck some shit up?"

* * *

 _ **\- Firstly, thank you for the continued reviews, your support means the world to me, and I love reading your thoughts, funny comments, and kind words. I just hope I can continue to return the favour by entertaining you all :)**_

 _ **-Secondly, I got a mix of preferences on chapter lengths, so I decided to give a mix of chapter lengths :P It's nice to know I can relax a little on my word count and not have to feel pressured to mash things into a certain limit, but I will still keep some chapters short and snappy where appropriate, and to get them out for faster updates. Typically the more character-driven chapters will be longer, and more plot-driven or action-based chapters will be shorter. That's the plan, anyway.**_


	18. The Raid

_**Warning: Graphic violence**_

* * *

 **Chapter 18: The Raid**

* * *

The dead of night was making its passage into dawn by the time the Minutemen force had crept up on Dunwich Borers and surrounded it, keeping to the shadows. All was a desolate calm in the Wasteland, the wind barely a wisp on the skin. The skies gave off a faint blue tint in the fading of moonlight, stars winking their farewells, and the air held a crisp chill from yesterday.

Ilya crept closer to the rocks outlining the quarry edge, keeping low and silent, the only sound emanating from the crunch of her boots on the gravel. She surveyed, paying special attention to the two complex's on either side of the quarry edge, then with a hand signal, ushered up Deacon. The self-proclaimed master of the shadows would be her wingman in this.

"I count three in our building, and two in MacCready's," she whispered to him. "I'll take out the one on the front steps, then we go in together for the other two. Use your pistol if we can't stealth them."

He nodded, hand reaching for his silenced 10mm. He had gifted Tommy Whispers' 'Deliverer' to Ilya upon the success of her first Railroad mission, but she had eventually gifted it back. Going in loud and hard was her preferred tactic. "Got it, boss," Deacon affirmed quietly. "Give MacCready the signal."

Ilya checked the coast, then reached a hand up above the rocks and clicked on a small torch once. Across the quarry, a light flicked back briefly. Go time. Together, the two moved up and hugged the side of the small complex. MacCready did the same, tailed by Cait for her hand-to-hand experience in the Combat Zone. Simultaneously, their first targets were jumped.

Ilya made a swift dash up the steps for her target, knife piercing his throat in a sickening squelch of flesh. The raider's gag was blocked by the entrance of the blade, and a tight wheeze was all that could escape. Ilya lowered him as softly as she could to prevent noise, and as he clung to her in his death throe, she jerked the small blade to sever his artery and drain his life force. She left him dying on the steps, oozing blood and twitching in silence.

Deacon was on her tail again in an instant, giving her the thumbs up in praise. They pressed up against the entrance, Ilya peering inside. Snappy hand signals were issued, and the pair rushed the raiders like snake-strikes. They had no qualms in handling them, Deacon going for a precise jab to a spine, Ilya slicing a throat.

Across the way, it looked like MacCready and Cait had taken out their sentries, too. Good. Step one: done. Deacon and MacCready, along with Minutemen sharpshooters, would use these buildings to provide sniper support.

Ilya drew her hunting rifle, turning to Deacon before traversing back down the steps. "Be careful up here."

"Careful is my middle name," he quipped in return, exchanging his pistol for a Railroad-issue 'Railway rifle.' The rail spikes would be a glaring tell to his covering fire.

Ilya gave him a solemn eye. "I mean it, Deacon. I lost Danse, I can't lose you, too."

He countered her concern with a half-smile. "I mean it, too. I'll be careful, don't worry. _You_ be careful down _there._ I told Clay that if he lets you die, I'll go Mister Sandman on his ass." Suddenly, his smile ebbed, and faint lines of sincerity etched themselves above his brow. "You're the only real friend I got, Ilya. So don't get dead."

Her resolve softened, and she stepped forward to crash a hand on his shoulder. He returned the gesture in equal force. They exchanged nods, then she turned for the exit again.

"...and no rushin'. Get it? 'Cause you're Russian?"

Ilya only stopped long enough to shake her head at him, then finally fled down the steps. Before returning to the Minutemen force, she cautiously slinked her way toward the very edge of the quarry, crawling on her stomach and scouting out the contents below to report back. The first thing that caught her eye came as a shock. They had a fucking vertibird down there. How in the fuck did they get that? She swore under her breath before moving on, scanning for numbers and defences. They had upped their game since last time she scouted them out. She counted at least a dozen automated turrets, and maybe twice the numbers of the Minutemen.

Clay-Crawler had said they always sent out the specimens in the initial wave, not only to serve as cannon fodder, but to panic the enemy and root them out from cover. Ilya knew that their pre-emptive strike would need to be a big one. She withdrew back behind the rocks and to Ronnie Shaw and Preston, reporting her discoveries.

"Hopefully the sharpshooters can snipe down anyone trying to fly that vertibird out of here," Preston commented, clutching his laser musket firmly. "We don't want to get pinned down by that minigun."

"They'll handle it," Ronnie stated confidently. " _We_ just have to focus on those specimens. No lettin' 'em get up to our level."

Ilya looked over at her crew waiting behind them, all of them donning either leather, metal, or combat armour pieces for protection. Even Dogmeat was sporting metal dog armour and helmet, heeling with the others like she had told him to, though his eyes were firmly trained on her. Ilya felt her maternal instinct swell, and an anxiety to keep the others safe joined it. Bearing this much responsibility was a new territory for her, and utterly petrifying. This would be no skirmish, this was the opening battle to war, and she had instigated it. Were the Minutemen really ready for an all-out war across the Commonwealth? God, what was she doing? Was this how Danse felt with the people under his command? She doubted he would feel this lost; he was experienced, and so much stronger than her...

Ilya realised that everyone was waiting for her, the silence dragging through the air and unsettling them. She clamped her jaw, fingers taut on her rifle. "Let's make some noise."

"You do the honours, Gen—... Ilya." Preston handed her an artillery smoke grenade. "Make it count."

She gave her customary silent nod and readied a long arc, right down into that hellhole where the raiders were sitting cosy. The following wait was filled with tension, and it seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

Finally, a woman down in the quarry gave a shout. "The fuck is that? Alright, which fuckwit threw a smokebomb down here?"

"Slay..." Ilya heard Clay-Crawler hiss in recognition.

Then, the skies overhead sang with incoming artillery shells, and it was music to Ilya's ears. A slow smile grew, and she hunkered down against the rocks for cover, seeing everyone else do the same. Deacon could be heard from the building.

"Here come the booms!"

And the booms were big. The first impact sent a violent jolt up through the quarry like the opening snap of an earthquake splitting the crust of the earth. Eardrums felt on the verge of bursting as the resulting sound hit with the shockwave, rock spitting up from below. Raiders could be heard cursing their rage and screaming for cover, only to receive the second shelling. It hit again like a drum through the bones, and more screams erupted, this time from fear and death. The salvo went on, rumbling the rocks and deafening the living, until it finally ceased into a dead silence.

"Open fire!" Ilya roared as she charged out from her position to take aim at the nearest machinegun turret. Her first shot was joined by a cascade of others, Minutemen popping out from their cover to rain lead and lasers down on the raiders. Multiple turrets were out of commission within seconds, and a few raiders were taken by surprise, but it didn't take long for them to adapt and return fire. Despite the amount of destruction in the chasm of the quarry, many had survived by seeking cover. Minutemen began to fall left, right, and centre.

Ilya squeezed off one more shot into the turret before its fire chased her away from the edge, rounds narrowly skimming over her head as she threw herself down. She crawled away and back to the others as they, too, fell back from the edge.

"Still have all your bits and pieces attached, kid?" Nick asked at her side.

"Yeah, for now," Ilya breathed, working on reloading her rifle. "We took out as many as we could, but now it's down to attrition." She glanced over as Strong and Clay-Crawler were still firing down from the edge, soaking up bullets while everyone else was forced into cover. They seemed to be exchanging words, but she couldn't discern over the clanging of continuous fire.

"Those turrets are proving to be a real problem," Nick then stated upon also reloading. "We can barely so much as stick our heads out before eating a good serving of lead. I don't suppose you have a trick up your sleeve for that?"

Ilya bit her lip in consideration. "I was going to save it for the specimens, but I guess now is as good a time as any." Before Nick could inquire, she gave a shrill whistle and waved up a Minutemen soldier with a Fatman balanced on his shoulder. She hefted its weight on her thin frame and flashed the staring synth a wry grin. "Boom time."

With that, she moved back toward the edge and shouted to Clay-Crawler and Strong. "Cover me!" They both drew the raider-fire as she stood and took aim for a spot that would wipe out two turrets at once, feeling the nuke launcher buck as the catapult threw out a mini-nuke. It whistled through the air almost comically before landing with a glorious ignition, taking out some raiders along with the turrets. Both the Super Mutant and the raider were ecstatic, cheering and laughing like it was a sport.

Ilya laughed with them, their psychotic reaction contagious, but before she could unleash another nuke, something sliced across her ribcage with a searing pain. She gave a startled cry and was flung back, hands losing grip of the heavy weapon in the process. Her head snapped back against the hard ground, and her breath escaped without return. She wasn't sure if the stars above her were real or just in her head.

"Whisper!" Clumsy metal hands engulfed her shoulders and shook her a little too roughly, the wound in her side flaring with pain, but it roused her lungs and she found herself taking a ragged inhale. "Whisper! Whisper!"

Ilya clutched at Clay-Crawler's arms and tried to get him to stop shaking her. "I'm okay," she coughed out, "but you're gonna kill me if you don't stop shaking me."

"Sorry!" He released her at once, unintentionally letting her flop back with a thud. She hissed in pain and then swore at him before feeling at the wound. The bullet had skimmed her flesh, right across one of her rib bones, grating through the bone in the process.

"Puny human, so squishy," Strong berated in obvious disapproval, still hammering down at the raiders with his assault rifle.

"Just a flesh wound," she defended in a wheeze while pushing back upright. Before anyone else could rush in to help, Strong released a roar of warning, and Ilya's eyes followed the direction of his index finger. A raider had managed to pick up the Fatman she had dropped, and was aiming up at them. Her brain screamed.

The mini-nuke was fired, and with mere seconds, Ilya did what her gut commanded and threw herself off the edge of the quarry. It was a sheer drop, the level below rushing up at her, but the scalding blast of heat above her kept her from regretting it. She failed to orient herself and landed heavily, the impact coursing through her bones and pushing out the agony from deep in her throat. But she forgot it as the fire above her expanded like a hungry monster. It seemed to growl as it loomed there, spitting dust and soot down on her in its loathing. She turned her head away from the heat and falling debris, only looking back to see the mushroom cloud drift skyward.

Groaning, Ilya remembered the pain and rolled on her side in an attempt to tolerate it, clutching the warm wetness at her rib. She could hear Clay-Crawler and a few others calling her name from above, and she was glad his power armour had saved him from the nuke. She hoped Strong had pulled through, too.

The worried calls suddenly shifted into harsh yells, and sniper fire centred in on her radius. Ilya pushed up on her hands to see the Fatman-wielding raider go down in a hailstorm of fire, along with multiple others in her immediate vicinity. Now was probably a good time to move.

Rolling on her stomach, Ilya looked for cover and sighted a pre-war bulldozer not too far away. With great effort, she dragged herself in that direction, ignoring the encompassing throb from every muscle, and the fiery sting of her wound. She hadn't gone far before a thrilled yell sounded behind her, followed by laughter. Ilya rolled to face the charging raider, her hand grasping for her pistol and taking rough aim. The rounds were absorbed by the armour over the raider's chest, merely faltering his gait. More laughter was spat out through his rotten teeth.

"You're fucked now, little girl!"

Ilya growled in frustration and bared her teeth upon his approach, scrambling back though preparing herself for a tussle. Her knife came out to rival his machete, but before he could go in for the kill, his head was torn from his spine by a rail spike through the forehead. The oversized nail shot his head out past Ilya and pinned it to the bulldozer over thirty metres away. The woman kicked the raider's decapitated body away as it fell toward her, and stared up at Deacon in the small building above, the close-call barely sinking in.

Deacon spared her a brief wave before adjusting his aim and loosing another rail spike. "Run, Ili! Run that tiny ass off! Run, Run, Run!"

She did, scurrying for the bulldozer as fast as her bruised body would allow, ducking behind it before any more raiders could form an interest in her. Catching her breath was proving to be difficult, and all this pain was fucking up her aim. A Stimpak was jabbed at her neck, Med-X swallowed in a waterless gulp, and the Jet was pulled without hesitation. A deep inhale of the decadent rush served her an instant boost of awareness. All the bullshit was numbed, but the environment slowed and sharpened.

She was at her apex.

Taking everything in, her first focus was that lonely Fatman, lying vulnerable without a wielder. She knew that weapon still posed a massive threat if she didn't get to it, fast. Unfortunately, however, it was out in the open, and no one would be getting near it without being decorated by bullets. Before she could even make any moves, an announcement travelled to her eardrums, deep and lethargic in her heightened state.

"Release the cherubs!"

The gangly creatures made their entrance in a mesh of sickly green, skittering out from the underground entrance in search of their prey. Ilya acted and took aim at the Fatman lying at the bottom of the quarry, firing off a train of bullets before one finally hit the loaded mini-nuke. The explosion ate up a great portion of the little bastards, and scattered the surrounding raiders into cover, giving the Minutemen the chance to gain the upper hand once more.

With the remaining dregs of the Jet, Ilya slipped out from cover and sprinted down the curving ramp, running and gunning in one-handed recklessness, downing several raiders before swapping out for her laser rifle. A cluster of specimens were disintegrated by her marksmanship, but they weren't her primary focus.

Slay was. She had pinpointed the woman earlier, fully outfitted in power armour, cussing out her raider brethren and demanding their obedience in suicidal actions. Taking her out would cripple their effectiveness. Clay-Crawler had said that Slay and a man known as Dark-Drinker were the main leaders of the Dark Bloods, so today, Ilya would make it her personal mission to end them both. Starting with Slay.

Her red lances scorched the raider's power armour black, though merely nipping at the metal. It drew Slay's attention, and the raider opened fire on Ilya with a high calibre combat rifle—Ilya knew that, by the enormous bullet hole in the stone wall she had slammed herself against for cover. The Jet abandoned her with a sigh, and she found herself flinching away as Slay's tenacious fire chipped at the stone and showered her in dust. Above the rattle, she could hear the woman bellowing like a crazed witch.

"You wanna fuck with me, bitch!? I'll cut you open and feed you your own guts! Come out, you fucking little whore! I'll end you! Hear me? I'll fuck you up and tear you apart!"

 _Damn, this bitch is really pissed with me._ Ilya slapped in a fresh fusion cell and held her rifle close to her chest, coughing out dust and squinting away from it, waiting for the precious silence of her opponent's reload. It couldn't come soon enough.

Upon it, she burst out from cover and swatted the raider leader once more, the thrums of her laser rifle reverberating through the quarry. Her persistence was rewarded, as Slay's chestplate began to cave in under the continuous heat and pressure.

"Shit!" the raider shrieked in her outrage, popping off a shot to chase Ilya back behind shelter. "You little fuck! Somebody kill her! Rip her apart, now!"

Ilya swore as she noticed many raiders changing their focus to her and advancing on her position, but she had a solution to a problem such as this. She tossed out a strategically aimed synth relay grenade and watched as a blinding finger of blue struck down like lightning, summoning a unit of Gen 1's. Their sudden appearance took the raiders by surprise, opening an entirely new firefight.

By then, Clay-Crawler had traversed halfway down the quarry, power armour reflecting bullets, and was at her side with shotgun prepped. "Whisper move fast," he exclaimed, voice high in exhilaration. "But hurt?"

"I'm fine!" Ilya shouted back over the battle. "Where's Dark-Drinker?"

Clay-Crawler indicated with his shotgun barrel. Another raider in power armour was nestled behind the vertibird, not actively engaging the Minutemen forces, but throttling and yelling at someone in a rage. The person at his whim didn't look like a raider, just a man in tattered rags, scared half to death by Dark-Drinker's intensity. He was shaking his head, refusing to do something. Ilya strained to make out what they were saying.

A pained cry from above stole her attention. She watched in horror as Preston collapsed backward with vibrant blood flecking his duster, before Nick grabbed him and pulled him away from the ledge and out of sight. Her eyes roamed the surrounding ledge of the quarry, seeing Minutemen falling down in droves, some still dangling lifelessly with their blood trailing down hanging limbs. Many were still fighting on, even with bullets riddling their bodies, screaming out both their hatred of raiders and pain of wounds. The entire battle was just a bloodletting, men and women stripped down to their bare primal instincts to bring about suffering on foes.

She had done this. She had killed all these Minutemen. They were dying because of her, because she wanted war, not patient enough to wait like Maxson had told her to. Danse had fallen victim to her, too, but he had been smart and gotten out in time, before she got him killed like everyone else. She didn't deserve the loyalty of all these people. It was all fucked up because _she_ was fucked up.

Her breath was coming in rapid pants, angry adrenaline gathering and clenching in her chest, burning it hot. She could feel it soar through her veins, feeding her blood, nourishing the growth of her wrath. The Jet was heavy again, calling on her, persuading her, and she gave it what it demanded. The second hit was potent, a heady rush consuming her sanity. She stirred from her safety on sudden impulse, storming out with laser rifle barking and lungs screaming.

"Whisper!" Clay-Crawler yelled, but she didn't care, couldn't. She had to kill as many of these fuckers as she humanly could, make it all count, vent her guilt into them, rip them all new assholes to stop them from killing her people.

She sprinted for an unsuspecting raider who was firing up at the Minutemen. In a swift motion, she drew her knife and slashed across his back, grabbing his neck from behind as he recoiled and stabbing the blade into his torso repeatedly, just stabbing and stabbing while he jerked and spluttered up thick blood from his throat. She didn't stop, not until he was limp and on the ground. She grabbed his machete, then she looked for her next victim.

A woman had noticed the attack and was firing down on Ilya from the metal stairway that travelled the height of the quarry. One bullet pounded into the leather armour over Ilya's chest, shoving her back with a winding bite, but the Jet kept her going, pushing her into a sprint for the stairway, outpacing the bullets that rained at her. She ascended the steps like a madwoman, bounding up them in great strides with no mind to the spray of rounds from above. Her insanity spooked the raider into a scramble for escape, but Ilya was upon her too quickly, lunging like a leopard and catching her by the legs. They both went down hard on the metal surface, and Ilya was smacked in the face with a boot before she could swipe at the raider's legs and sever them at the knees. There was a blast of blood and a ragged scream, which fuelled Ilya on. She knelt over the legless woman, raised the machete high, and thrust down to impale her through the heart, twisting for added effect and savouring the gag upon death that it wrought.

Ilya barely had time to take a breath before another raider leaped at her, grieving for his dead companion in a wild slur of words. He threw himself atop her and landed a solid blow to her jaw, then his hands secured around her throat and squeezed. The blaring throb in her jaw was suddenly dampened by the blockage of her airway, and Ilya gagged as her fingers tried to pry off the raider's grip. It was useless, his fingers were wiry, his fresh grief contorting his face above hers, beneath a grimacing pleasure at watching her die slowly. She tried to shove off his weight with her legs, but he was simply too heavy, pinning her beyond hope.

Her vision began to blur and darken, the few stars still in the sky seeming to whirl above the raider's head, and her fading grip on life was almost peaceful, the straining in her core growing distant and irrelevant. A shadow befell her, and she thought this was it, ready for it, waiting, but a red glare pierced the shadow and struck the raider's back.

Ilya was barely aware of what had just happened, only that life was streaming back into her lungs, and it hurt like a bitch. She gasped and coughed through a coarse throat, over and over, before she had recovered enough to take notice of the deafening sound invading the skies. With a hand over her throat, she peered skyward to see a squadron of vertibirds passing over, laser fire snapping out from them as they circled around for another pass. Ilya could hardly believe it.

The Brotherhood was here.

* * *

 _ **-So I planned for the battle to be in one chapter, but then things escalated... I'm gonna have to section it up into multiple chapters, I hope you don't mind that. Still, I hope you enjoyed. I probably had too much fun with this one. Thanks for reading :)**_


	19. United We Stand

**Chapter 19: United We Stand**

* * *

Ilya's eyes followed the vertibirds as they circled the skies like hawks, daring to smile at the very notion of their assistance. Their miniguns were shredding the raider forces, making small play of their numbers and turret defences. The sheer amount of projectiles gushing down through the air was almost breathtaking. Maxson had been adamant in his decision not to aid the Minutemen. What had changed his mind? Was Danse here?

Ilya's amazed distraction was short-lived, however, as she realised the raider who had previously been strangling her was very much still alive and kicking. Right at her stomach. Her leather chestpiece dulled most of the force, but she still heaved and bent inward on reflex. He steadied himself on the railings then kicked again in a mad fury, but the Jet allowed her to strike out with lightning speed, the toe of her boot connecting with his groin.

It was his turn to heave, and he toppled over, clutching his precious pieces and whining in agony. She grabbed at the railing of the stairway and hauled herself to her feet, looking down on the man as he wept, probably both from pain and the loss of his companion, who she had killed moments before. Where the pre-war version of herself would have taken pity and been struck with guilt, she found herself sparing him not a shred of it, and simply ended him with a shot through the head, spitting on his corpse in derision.

The vertibirds were unleashing their payloads, power-armoured troopers dropping from great heights right down to the pit of the quarry, their shockwaves rivalling the initial artillery bombardment. Ilya leaned over the railing and spotted Clay-Crawler guarding her from below, pumping his shotgun into a raider's face at point blank. It looked like fun, so she swung herself over the railing and dropped down to join him, bringing her laser rifle to bear on the closest target she could find. The two moved as one in their descent of the quarry, under the cover of Minutemen, sniper, and vertibird fire from above.

The rest of the crew were in the clear to begin their descent, too, and moved as a lethal parade with Strong at the helm and Hancock directing their offensive, gunning down anything in their path. Preston was not among them, and Ilya felt dread chill the pit of her stomach.

The tide seemed to have turned in their favour, and all was going well, until Slay screamed for more specimens. Their inevitable appearance had everyone back on edge, and even the Brotherhood tightened their formations.

"Slay!" Clay-Crawler suddenly hollered out at Ilya's side, pulling off his helmet and dumping it to the ground with indignation. "This face! Remember? Remember this face!?" Ilya hadn't seen him so incensed, revelling in the spotlight he had created, challenging his nemesis with scorn spitting out from his lips.

Slay ceased her fire and stared. "Clay-Crawler! You conniving little whore! You think you can turn on me and actually win? You're nothing! Just a weak little bitch! Get your ass back down here where it belongs, or I'll rip your heart out and feed it to you!"

"I kill you!" Clay-Crawler screamed down at her, teeth snapping beneath peeled back lips. He reached over his shoulder for the Junk Jet and shot out a Vault-Tec lunchbox, of all things. It bashed into her helmet and knocked her flat on her ass. Clay-Crawler just laughed at her in his typical high-pitched, manic way, before shoving something else into the Junk Jet from a duffel bag tied on his back, like an arrow quiver. Ilya realised that she wasn't so insane, after all.

The Brotherhood soldiers down below were making a mess of the incoming specimens, charring them into ash piles and stomping them into goo, but the wave just seemed to keep pouring out from the tunnel into the mine, and Ilya fretted for their safety. Too many of her allies had died today, she couldn't let any more of them down.

"Clay!" she called, interrupting him from firing yet more junk down on Slay, who was keeping to cover and returning fire. "We need to get down there and help those soldiers out!"

He glanced down at them, eyes thoughtful before they switched into decisive orbs. "Get on back. I carry down!"

She gawked as her comprehension dawned. That was new, why hadn't she ever thought of that before now? Then again, it was crazy. But they were both crazy. She gave a nonchalant, 'fuck it' shrug and approached his back, climbing up and clinging on, only feeling slightly ridiculous. "Giddy-up! Let's go!"

He complied and started out with bounding strides, and Ilya instantly regretted her decision as her bruised and battered body filed many screaming complaints at her. The raider covered his bare head from fire with his metal forearm, and launched himself down to the base of the quarry. The impact nearly knocked Ilya off, but she managed to cling on, only hopping down once the ground had stabilized.

She thanked him before slipping behind a block of cement, providing the Brotherhood soldiers with covering fire. She still had some synth relay grenades, but figured it would probably be a bad idea with the Brotherhood in the house. But she was full of bad ideas, and pitched it right amongst the endless masses of specimens.

"Synth friendlies!" she alerted. "Watch your fire!"

The synths streaked into existence and immediately defended themselves against the herd of creatures, and soon, the battlefield was crisscrossed with red and blue laser fire.

With that under control, Ilya surveyed the situation as the Jet was on the comedown. The Minutemen were advancing down the quarry, following her crew, while the raider forces were being pushed back and retreating deeper inside the quarry. The stragglers still up top were being picked off by both Minutemen and Brotherhood snipers, and all turrets were now decrepit piles of junk for salvage. Dark-Drinker was nowhere to be seen, probably chased inside by the Brotherhood, and Slay...

SMACK! Something colossal bashed at her in full force, picking her off her feet and sending her slamming into a wall. Her back took the brunt, breath exploding out of her lungs as she fell facedown, winded, again. She gave a frayed cough and tried to breathe, but it was a narrow inhale. Clay-Crawler was tangling with someone, she could hear his growls and the clank of metal smashing against something, then his yell of pain, and no more.

"Clay?" she rasped quietly, craning her neck up and trying to blink away the haze over her eyes. But it wasn't Clay-Crawler who answered, it was Slay.

"Told you I'd fuck you up," the woman's voice grated, and her metallic footsteps pulsated over Ilya's trembling body as she stood right over her and just glowered for a long, satisfied moment. Bullets were chiming against her armour, presumably from Ilya's crew, but the raider seemed to give less of a fuck, meeting it all with laughter. "Nobody fucks with me and gets away with it."

Ilya felt harsh, overwhelming fingers tangle through her hair and clamp down around her skull, prising her upright so Slay could see her face. It felt like her spine was going to snap, and Ilya screamed, hands going up to grip at the metal hand.

"Hmph," Slay grunted in disappointment. "You're nothing, just skin-and-bones. No wonder you can't even fight back, no meat on ya. Yeah, I think I'd like to see you suffer out in the Blood Lands, thrown in with all the other dirty little slaves and worked until you rot or just slit your own throat." She stood, pulling Ilya up with her until she was fully off the ground. The pressure was lifted from her spine, but now it was applied to her skull as Slay's hand clawed in. Ilya just grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut, baring the pain and just waiting, waiting for it to be over, one way or another. She didn't even care how.

Slay dangled her out at arm's length. "Here, kitty-kitty-kitties," she called to the specimens. "I have some fresh meat for you. Come and get it while it's still warm!"

Some of the specimens altered their focus from the Brotherhood threat and broke off from the main army, scrambling straight for Ilya, having caught her scent. She growled at them and tried to rip off Slay's grip, but she knew it was hopeless, even as her crew and a vertibird's minigun from above mowed down the incoming creatures. There were simply too many.

Slay hurled Ilya into their mass, and she felt her weight squish some of them as she landed and rolled, green blood painting her vault suit. Her instinct was to fight until defeated, so she lashed out with her machete and caught as many as she could, pushing back up on her feet even as the specimens climbed aboard and latched onto her armour pieces. She brushed them off and stomped them flat, slashing down with the machete, until one actually managed to spring at her hand and bite down with snake-like fangs. She yelped and dropped the machete, and was defenceless.

That was, until a metal mass dropped down from the skies like a saviour from heaven, and scattered the horde, as well as knocking Ilya over. This seemed oddly familiar... The Brotherhood soldier drove off the specimens with a chain of lasers, chasing their disappearance with a grenade for good measure. Ilya knew it was Danse just by the way he moved, self-assured and precise, turning on Slay to greet her with ruthless aggression. She was pushed back behind what was left of her forces.

Ilya was back on her feet and lasering down foes at Danse's side, thanking him in a small break of fire. He didn't respond, keeping his focus on the field and on his aim. They held out as more specimens appeared for round two, and it was a long while of numbing, mindless combat until Ilya could run over to check on Clay-Crawler.

He was flat on his back, spread-eagled and unconscious, with a brimming shiner on his cheek which was puffing out his eye and tinting it black. Slay had obviously wanted him back alive. Ilya lightly slapped at his other cheek, then resorted to dousing him in water from her canteen. He spluttered awake.

"Wha? She! She! She! It's Her! Her!" he began in a familiar daze.

"Yeah, yeah, heard it all before," Ilya snapped him out of it, dragging at his arm to coerce him up. "Up! No time for sleep, we're in the middle of the battlefield! Get your shit together!"

"RPG!" someone hollered. Ilya scanned for the dreaded threat, only seeing it once it was too late. Dark-Drinker aimed the rocket launcher skyward and fired off a missile. It sailed right at a vertibird, plummeting through its hull and igniting it into a corona of fire. The event lit up the quarry like the sun in daylight, a bright harbinger to the falling wreck that endangered all below.

Shock. Panic. Desperation. Mind a frenzy, blank to a solution. Sorrow, giving in to the inevitable. She felt it all within the heartbeat she was given to react.

"Ilya!"

A shadow of steel, a rush as he charged for her. Gathered roughly. Pushed down, hard. Slammed and covered and braced by his weight. A breath. Then it hit like the force of a thousand hammers, crushing and burning. It was pain. So much pain.

But life. They were alive.

Ilya opened her eyes to find herself staring at Danse's helmet, wishing she was staring into his eyes, seeing his face, touching it, kissing it. She didn't utter a word, neither did he. She didn't know what to say, and he was just bad with words, fullstop. The moment stretched out until finally, he was the first to speak.

"Are... you alright?"

God, just the sound of his voice made her melt, and she knew it wasn't the heat of the flaming debris on top of them. She suddenly wanted to release all her suppressed emotion, bawl into him and confess her sorrow, apologize over and over, tell him how much he meant to her, that she would never hurt him like that again, that she was stupid and a mess and she would fix it all. She would promise. _Promise,_ damn it.

But she just nodded, faintly, still staring up into his visor as if a blink would make him vanish from existence and never come back. He seemed to stare back in equalled daze for a while, then he tried to shift his weight upon her, and found he couldn't, that he was pinned by the wreckage of the vertibird. Ilya became aware of how crushed she actually was, and let out a wince.

"Hold on," he tried to assure through a grunt, "let me just—" he shoved up in an attempt to lift the weight, but it was too heavy, even for his power armour. "Damn it."

"Danse," she drew his attention back to her. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything..." it trailed off on the verge of a sob.

He gave a sad sigh, the sound damp through his helmet speakers. "Let's not do this now..."

Ilya swallowed a sob and nodded, biting the quiver in her lip. Her hands were pressed to his chestplate, and as much as she felt she should move them, she couldn't. Should, couldn't, and didn't want to, even if he was slowly crushing her to death. She would rather die here than go out there and fight without him at her side.

The fire was spreading closer, breathing heat more intensely, dark, oily smoke snaking its way into their den through crevices, and Ilya coughed as it invaded her lungs.

Danse tried again to support his own weight, shuffling an arm under them both. "Can you breathe?"

"Barely," her voice scratched.

He shuffled some more. "Just try to hold out. Someone will get to us soon."

"Why did you come here?"

The question had snuck up on him. He hesitated. "Elder Maxson decided it was in our best interest to assist the Minutemen."

She swallowed smoke and muffled another cough. "Not what I meant."

He sighed again, coming to a halt in his attempts to keep the weight off her. He must have realised that she was going to keep talking regardless of him trying to stop her. "I don't know," he eventually gave in lost honesty. _She_ knew. The fact that he had thrown himself at her to save her life spoke an abundance of how he still cared, but he either truly didn't know himself well enough to realise that, or he was just too proud to admit it. The big, stupid oaf.

Whether he would ever forgive her or not, she could die knowing that part of him still cared about her.

Voices were drifting in from just beyond the wreckage, and they could hear sheets of metal and debris being hauled off and thrown aside. They both breathed a sigh of relief.

It didn't take long for the Brotherhood and Minutemen to combine their efforts and free the two, along with Clay-Crawler, who had curled into a tight ball and covered his head. Danse was off Ilya as soon as he could be, gently helped her up, handed her off to several field scribes, and was out of sight before she could even realise it.

People were cheering at their survival, at the success of the first part of the raid, at the rescue from the Brotherhood in the most dire moments of the battle, but Ilya just felt like a piece of shredded shit tossed over a barbeque and then sat on by a behemoth. Apparently Slay and Dark-Drinker had escaped in their vertibird, but no one really seemed to care too much. The exterior of the quarry had been cleared, and that was a massive win.

Ilya kept looking for Danse amongst the rabble, but he had vanished in a blink, just like she feared he would. Was he going to help them clear out the interior of the quarry, or would he stay out here and distance himself? All she wanted was a chance to talk things over.

All she wanted was him.


	20. Interlude

**Chapter 20: Interlude**

* * *

The aftermath of the first assault was a medley of elation and mourning, the dead being gathered and set out to rest above the quarry to later be buried. The tension brewing between the Minutemen and Brotherhood was palpable, and a brief squabble broke out over whose snipers should be posted where, but eventually, after a hard word from Danse, they settled the matter and had the quarry secured and patrolled in little time. It was a feat in itself that he was acting as mediator between the two factions.

From then on, Ilya's senses were piqued for Danse, eyes following his every move around the quarry as he patrolled and surveyed his men, keeping the tension between the two forces on his leash. She made sure she was always aware of where he was and what he was doing. Just like any good soldier was aware of her comrades at all times, just like any good friend was aware. Not that she was a good friend.

The crew had crowded around restlessly while the scribes, accompanied by Curie, ushered Ilya over to a slab of cement and sat her down to tend to her condition, pricking her with Stimpaks and wrapping her in field dressings. It irked the shit out of her, especially when they hovered around and blocked her view of Danse, which then led her to leaning past them, and in turn, making it blatantly obvious that she was ogling him like some love-sick puppy.

"You really must take more care for your safety in combat, Mademoiselle," Curie interrupted her spying session. Ilya just hummed in distracted agreement. Most of the damage was superficial, but debilitating, nonetheless, and she was appreciative of the extra dose of Med-X prescribed for her. She kept a tight lip on the fact that she was already swimming in an array of chems.

"Miss Ilya," Codsworth fretted next on gliding approach. "Are you certain that you'll be up to going deeper into that quarry? You do look like you took some rather nasty knocks."

Ilya mustered her best smile of reassurance. "I'll be fine, Codsworth. I've had it worse." _And I have chems._

"Well, alright. But one more injury, and I'll be putting my figurative foot down!"

"Nick," Ilya then summoned, while Curie was dabbing and prodding at her bullet wound. The synth came closer and knelt before her, his presence alone giving her a sense of stability. "Preston?" she asked bluntly. She almost didn't want to know.

Nick's lucid eyes blinked solemnly before answering. "He caught one pretty good in the chest, but a Minutemen medic got to him pretty darn fast and managed to stop the bleeding. We think he'll be alright, so no need to worry too much. He _did_ tell us to tell you not to worry." He patted at her knee, like a father would when comforting his daughter.

Ilya released her hostage breath, letting her shoulders fall. "Shit. Of course he did." She peered around at everyone as they hovered, looking every bit like the rag-tag assortment that they were, inspecting them for injuries. "Everyone else still have their ass attached?" They all gave positive answers, and for that she was thankful beyond measure. Even Clay-Crawler was up and full of life, as if his face had never been acquainted with metal knuckles. Maybe the specimen mutations had helped him out with that.

"Unlike yourself," Hancock spoke up, sauntering closer with an impressed tug on his mouth. "You look like shit, sister."

She scoffed, canting a brow. "And _you_ don't?"

A short laugh trickled from him as he languidly sat down next to her. "I'll give you that one. Never expected you'd be such a scrapper. Nice to not be the only muscle for a change."

"You haven't seen anything yet," Ilya said with a rogue smirk, resting an elbow on his shoulder.

"Oh, this'll be good. But careful, I might go feral with the anticipation."

She laughed fondly, her ribs punishing her for it, though the chems dulled it to a bearable punishment. Friends like Hancock made it so easy for her to bury herself in the affinity, in the banter and humour they traded. Humour was a defence and coping mechanism for her, just as much as it was for Deacon and dealing with his past, and she suspected that was why they both got along so well; both of them had lost their spouses and relied on their own wits to keep going. She had no doubts that if it weren't for all of them, she would have ended it the moment she arrived back from the Institute.

Thinking of affinities to bury herself in, Deacon and MacCready were hustling down the outside ramps of the quarry, having something of a race as they pushed and shoved at each other like competitive little boys. Ilya thought they were way too upbeat for what had just gone down here... then realised she was turning into a bitter bitch...

MacCready was the first to land at the base of the quarry, laughing back up at Deacon, who was huffing loudly on his descent. "Aw, what's wrong, old man? These scrawny legs too fast for ya? Some assassin you are!"

Deacon withheld his response until he reached the bottom and bent over on his knees, spitting congealed saliva on the cement. "An assassin of leisure, thank you very much. My victims never hear or see me, so I never have to run out of dodge. It's a comfy profession."

MacCready chortled in disbelief. "Bullsh—I mean, whatever, man. You're so full of it."

"If you two're ever lookin' for a way to keep fit," Cait piped up, a suggestive quirk on her painted lips, "I have a few fun ideas in mind for the three of us, _and_ , no equipment needed. Unless o'course you wanted to, doesn't bother me. Maybe even Piper would like to join us, we could have ourselves a real party."

The two men reacted with interest, slanting the fiery red-head curious eyes, but Piper was quick to shoot the idea down.

"Never gonna happen, Cait."

"Strong bored! Strong want to kill something," came the mutant's complaint amongst it all.

Ilya listened to their group exchange silently. God. Everyone was so amped up, and here she was, falling apart at the seams at only half-time. She really should have taken it easy back there, but something had just come over her and taken the reins. And it had felt _good_. The Jet, maybe? Had she gone too hard on it? She knew she was playing it close to dangerous territory with the stuff, toying with the idea of getting lost in it, but she really thought she had it under control. She was aware that she had a problem, unlike being in denial about it, so that would keep her from taking things too far, right? It was there when she needed it, when no one else was around for her, to understand her... she didn't _need_ anyone to understand her, the Jet understood her, but she wasn't abusing it. It was just a boost, fuel to keep her going when things got too much. She wasn't dependent on it like some fuck-faced raider. Right? Right! No, it wasn't the Jet, she had that under control.

Maybe her fury came from seeing Preston go down, with all the other Minutemen. Guilt was still mincing at her soul for the blood spilled here.

Maybe it was Danse, the guilt she had been carrying for what she did, and the pain of missing him, of going through the last few days without him, of doing all _this_ without him.

Or maybe it was Nate and Shaun, her eagerness to escape from the reality of Shaun's fate and be with Nate. Let the battlefield take her back to him... had that been it? Had she been chasing after death back there?

The rasp of a canine's tongue licking at the blood on her boots pulled her back to awareness. She shifted her boot away from Dogmeat's snout and reached down—wincing—to pull off his metal helmet and scratch under his jaw.

"Hey, pal," she acknowledged him quietly, pairing it with a tender smile at the loyal animal who always seemed to smile back with just as much love. Sometimes it was nice to have that one companion who would never judge her or talk back or even talk at all. Someone who would never get hurt by her stupid mistakes, or hurt her in return, or tell her what to do, or make her feel guilty for worrying over her. While everyone chattered and recounted the battle in colourful pride, she spent a long while fussing over Dogmeat, tending his armour and petting his fur, all the while keeping one eye on Danse above the quarry. She hadn't caught him looking back even once, utterly consumed by his duties.

"Uh, heads-up, kiddo," Nick alerted Ilya to an encroaching presence behind her.

She twisted to see a power armour clad woman stomp in on their gathering and address Ilya without so much as eyeing the ghoul and synth on either side of her, though it was evident that it was an effort. Ilya cringed inwardly. Could this situation be any more perfect? Actually, add Strong right next to her, too, and yes, it could be. She was thankful that the mutant was on the outside of the gathering, conversing with Clay-Crawler, who had retrieved and donned his helmet again to keep any Brotherhood soldiers from recognising him.

The woman wasted no time. "I've been enlightened that you're the so-called 'General' to these Minutemen, Knight Harper," she snapped the tension like a knife to a taut thread, straight in with the sharp end. "Funny. Elder Maxson had no idea, this _whole_ time. It's a shame you never got around to informing him, yourself."

 _Fuuuck._ Which Minutemen idiot let that one slip? In mute shock, Ilya just stared up at the woman, whose platinum blonde hair was pulled up into a topknot so firmly that it stretched her features into an angular set. She appeared battle-hardened, like Danse, but due to Maxson's deceiving visage, Ilya wouldn't like to guess at this woman's age.

"I'm Star Paladin Groves," the soldier revealed at length, her eyes still rigidly locked to Ilya's without a quiver of interest in the ghoul or synth, "and I've been given free rein to bring you back to the Prydwen by any means necessary, whether that be willing escort or forceful apprehension."

Ilya was still processing the 'Star Paladin' part. She had assumed that Danse was the ranking officer here, but a star paladin? First the surprise assistance in the battle, now reeling her in with the big guns? Maxson was really pulling out all the hat tricks to get her back on side. What the shit. Thanks for the heads-up, Danse.

"On direct order from Maxson, no doubt," Ilya mumbled dryly. The man did like to deal with his subordinates personally, whether to sniff out corruption or weakness, or for some other purpose, she didn't know.

" _Elder_ Maxson," Groves corrected with emphasis. "And I take orders only from the Elder, as my ranking designates."

So she was a proud woman, Ilya picked out. Like most in the Brotherhood.

"Now," the woman went on without a slip in her gait, "I require you to accompany me back to the Prydwen. Elder Maxson was very specific that you were to be retrieved as soon as possible and delivered to his quarters, pending a debriefing."

"'Delivered?'" Ilya echoed, vexed by the woman's gall. She stood to face her, unfazed by the height difference, or the clenching of metal fists. Hancock and Nick stood with her. "And to his personal quarters? A man like Maxson should know I'm not that kind of woman, not on a first date, at least." Her afterthought left the star paladin wavering with distaste, so Ilya took advantage. "He really expects all that, and he didn't even bother to send a postcard? _'My Dear Knight, I'm sorry I'm an ass, I can't help it. Please come back to me, I miss you so. Kissy-face, Maxson.'_ HowI've been dreaming of that postcard, and I'm afraid that without it, I just can't come back to His Majesty."

Groves did not look amused, though she retained a cool facade, dark eyes needling into the sarcastic woman. "Knight, I have no patience for your sass. If you're not willing to—"

"Look," Ilya sliced her words in a sudden stern veer, "I'm not Maxson's bitch. I went AWOL for a reason, and while I'm not against the Brotherhood, I won't be reporting back any time soon. As you've just found out, I have an obligation to these people, and we have a job to finish here. If you're here to assist us, then we welcome the help, but if you're really only here to drag me back, then scat, we can take it from here. So you tell Maxson, if he wants me back, he's gonna have to come down to earth with all us mud-squatters and do it himself." She began to amble away, but stopped mid-limp. "Oh, and tell him I want a full-sentenced apology for leaving the Minutemen out to dry, for my dog to be allowed inside the Prydwen, and a box of chocolates." As she walked away from the star paladin, Ilya really hoped the whole 'by any means necessary' thing was a bluff. But with each step she took without hearing an outbreak of gunfire behind her, she breathed easier and easier.

Deacon pranced up on her flank, railway rifle balanced up against his shoulder. "Now there's the Ilya I know and love. Where _have_ you been hiding all this time?"

"Is she still watching?" Ilya whispered, breezing over his question.

Deacon glanced back inconspicuously. "Uh, that would be a yes. Glowering, more like."

Damn. She was actually shaking from that encounter. Calling the woman's bluff had been risky, but man had it felt _oh so good._ Her first exchange with a star paladin, and she was still breathing.

"So..." Deacon uttered as he followed her up the quarry, next to Dogmeat. "Danse is back."

"Yeup."

"... Did you two have a chance to talk things out?"

"Nope."

"Ah," he concluded. "Change of topic, then. Remember when I said 'no rushing the enemy?' Yeah, what happened to that?"

Ilya cleared her throat and rushed to formulate a response. "...I got a little overexcited."

" _Right_... Just a tad."

 _Insert subject change here._ "Thanks for saving my ass back there, by the way."

"No biggy." He took the bait. "But it _was_ when you nearly got yourself killed." Or not.

Ilya sighed, pressing reset on the conversation and going down the honest route. Deacon was too perceptive to miss her tells and nuances. "I just... lost it. I don't really know what happened."

"Okay, yeah. This is what I was afraid of." He clutched her shoulder and brought her to a halt, stepping around before her. "You're still using, aren't you."

She gazed deeply into his shades, the morning light reflecting off them and betraying any hint to what was beneath, but she didn't need to see his eyes to know how dead-pan serious he was. This serious-Deacon was coming out of his shell, and she wasn't sure how she felt about him yet.

"Your silence speaks volumes," he said in her absence. "Ili, it doesn't have to be this hard for you. We have people in the Railroad who can get you cleaned up, it'll be instant, and discreet. No one else needs to know. Promise."

She almost laughed in his face. "Wait, what? I don't need treatment. I'm not _that_ far gone. It's just a side thing, a stress-relief, like having a drink and getting shit-faced once and a while. Today, I was just in a lot of pain and was pissed at the raiders, so I needed a little pick-me-up. That's all."

Deacon slanted his head and crossed his arms. "You just said that you didn't know what it was."

"Well, I just figured it out."

"Quit lying."

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

She growled and pushed past him. "No, I'm not..." She heard him heave a defeated sigh and plod along after her. He wouldn't drop it that easy, she knew, but she just needed it dropped for now.

"Where are you going?" he drawled flatly.

"To see Preston." _And corner Danse._ A quick scan had him spotted consulting with a Brotherhood lancer, casually leaning his armoured weight against the grounded vertibird's nose to converse through the canopy. _Good_ , she thought. _Don't you move._

Preston had been dragged back into the small building Deacon had used as a crow's nest. Upon entry, Ronnie Shaw ushered them over to Preston's stretcher. He was propped up to keep the blood-flow from pooling around the wound, and a decent wad of cloth and padding was strapped around his bare chest. Ilya didn't have a gaping bullet wound, but beneath her bloodied vault suit and leather, she was strapped up much the same.

"Don't gab too long, he needs his rest," Ronnie warned before slipping outside.

Ilya nodded her compliance and knelt down at Preston's side, extending a sympathetic smile. "Damn it, Garvey. You scared the shit out of me."

Preston went to chuckle, but the wound to his chest must have burnt pretty bad, because he groaned loudly and his face scrunched up in tolerance. "Sorry, General. Guess I got too trigger-happy out there." Ilya let the general thing slide, just for now.

"How are you feeling?"

"It hurts, I'm not going to lie. But I'll be fine. You probably have enough to worry about, with the Brotherhood showing up and all."

Ilya huffed and nodded. "There's been some drama already, yeah."

"Well," Preston shrugged, a minute movement, "I'll just come out and say it, I don't think we would have pulled through without their help. The raiders were much more dug in than I was expecting. They must have pulled numbers from all across the Commonwealth. I wouldn't be surprised if they were setting up other bases like this elsewhere." He sounded almost in awe of them.

"I'm just glad the ones here weren't as bat-shit crazy as the ones out in the Rad Lands," Ilya muttered, shaking her head on remembrance of their demented warcries and frenzied disregard for life.

"Hopefully now with the Brotherhood lending a hand, we can scout out any potential sites where they're gathering numbers. This victory will really give the Minutemen the recognition we need. I think we'll be gathering in numbers, too."

Ilya gazed off and let that sink in for a moment. They had really done it, wiped out these new raiders at their Commonwealth headquarters. All that was left to do here was a sweep and clear of those that had fled underground, and they could call it a day. Then, the real work began. Cementing this alliance between the Brotherhood and Minutemen. With that, they could take the fight out into the Rad Lands and burn out the scum at the source.

"I suppose you'll be heading back up to the Prydwen and talking with that Maxson guy again?" Preston's tone was dull, like she would be committing a necessary evil. If he was still wary of the Brotherhood, then she could bet her ass that the majority of the Minutemen were, too. Yup, this alliance was going to be a piece of work.

Ilya smirked. "Not a chance that I'm doing all the legwork. If Maxson is really serious about this alliance, then he'll make the effort to come to _me_. I'm playing hard to get."

"Using your value to him as a linchpin for this alliance, huh?" Deacon mused behind her, sounding impressed by her tact. "I like it. A big 'fuck you' to the boss. Always fun."

Ilya swivelled in her kneel and traded eyes up with Deacon. "I figured it's the only way to secure this thing, whether he respects the Minutemen or not. I won't be just a tool to him anymore, I'll be an ally, a partner, almost, with power of my own for him to win or lose."

Deacon looked thoughtful for a moment. "You think you could get him to call you General?"

Ilya blew out amused air. " _That_ would be gold."

"I would pay a thousand caps just to hear that."

"Two thousand."

Preston cleared his throat to gather both of their attention again. "When you two have finished with your fantasies, I think we should get Ronnie back in so we can talk all this over with her. The sooner the better, right? Every moment we waste gives those raiders time to regroup."

Ilya swivelled back to him and frowned. "Later. I'm leading the sweep into the quarry. Besides, you need to rest, Preston. You took a bullet in the chest, remember?"

He frowned back. "I feel fine, I'm up to the planning. But are you really sure that you going back down there is such a good idea? Can't you just let the Brotherhood handle it? You're not looking too good, if you don't mind me saying..."

"So I've heard," Ilya sighed. It was becoming apparent that she wasn't inspiring much confidence in her followers. But she didn't ask to be their leader, their general, their tip-of-the-spear. The role had been thrust at her the moment her boots crunched onto the apocalyptic soil. She wanted to do things her way, on her own terms, damn it. "Fine. I get to go down in the quarry, and you can start laying down some plans with Ronnie. Sound fair?"

Preston seemed unsure. "You want us to organise things without your say-so?"

"You're my second-in-command, and Ronnie has been like the unofficial staff sergeant ever since she showed up. I trust you guys to get things done. Sort out some possible locations where we can dig in and really set up some strongholds, start spreading ourselves out more." She paused for a moment, pondering. "If someone from the Brotherhood approaches you with terms, feel free to go with what you think would work best. If they want to reinforce our strongholds, go with it, just don't let them run the show... oh, and don't spread our numbers too thin out there. If they offer to let us in on their outposts, only spare what's necessary. We can't afford to fortify _them_ just yet. Not until we gain some more numbers..."

Preston was eyeing her with an amused, knowing look. "You sure you don't wanna be here for this? You seem to have it all planned out already... General."

Ilya blinked and then bit her lip. "Shit. The general thing is really growing on me, isn't it..." Preston nodded, containing a smile. Deacon was already sniggering at her back.

"Better watch out on this date with Maxson, then. I get the feeling he likes strong, powerful women."

She darted a hard look back at him. "In his wildest dreams." She gained a sudden thought, and grew a smirk. "And you never know, he might like two-faced, poor-humoured men."

Against her implied drift, Deacon turned her snipe around into a full backfire. "Ah ha! I _knew_ there was a bromance going on between Maxson and Danse..."

A loud hoot tried to break out of Preston's belly, but it was strangled half-way as he doubled over and winced in pain. After some struggling to compose himself, he sat back, still trying not to laugh. "You have to admit, that was good," he defended himself against Ilya's glare.

It was. But she wasn't going to satisfy Deacon's pride. "Just... let me tackle Maxson." It wasn't that she didn't trust Preston and Ronnie to deal with Maxson, more that she didn't trust Maxson to deal with them. She had a rough gist of his angle, and a certain level of personal insight into how he operated. She liked to think she did, at least.

"Alright, Ilya," Preston agreed, though still giving off a shade of reluctance. "We'll do our best. You should probably get back out there. Don't worry about me. I'm all good. Got plenty to keep me busy... Oh wait! Before you go, I got word over the radio that another settlement needs your help from raiders. Let me just put the location in your Pip-Boy."

"You're fucking kidding me." Ilya dangled her arm out limply to give him access to her Pip-Boy.

Once outside and finally free of duties, Ilya had to remind herself to not to carry tension in her shoulders or face, otherwise she would end up with a permanent scowl like Danse. Her first instinct was to hunt him down and corner him, demanding they sort themselves out, but he wasn't over at the vertibird anymore. For fuck sakes.

"Is now a good time to mention I don't like heights? Getting near the edge around here... ahh..." Deacon was whinging in the border of her awareness. She was too busy scanning around for Danse, shading her eyes from the morning sun to study every power-armoured soldier in and around the quarry to check for him. How the hell did he move so fast in that god damned suit?

"Watch your step around here. It's a _long_ way down."

Ilya flicked her head around in surprise, heart knocking on her ribcage at the sound of that _rapturous_ voice, eyes following Danse approaching them from somewhere behind the small building, where they had lined out the deceased. She couldn't tell if his tone had been playful or not, but it was good-natured, either way. His helmet was off, borne under an arm, and his tactical hood framed an unexpectedly warm cast to his features. Features she had been yearning to see again for so many laboured days and nights. And she always appreciated the way his tactical hood hardened his features into a more rugged aspect, balanced by those thoughtful eyes yet darkened by the heavy brows... she let her eyes drink in the sight of him. The small lacerations to his face from the heist escape were barely visible now, time and Stimpaks had served him well. Just seeing him again stirred up heat in her womanly depths, and she was that beguiled initiate under his wing once more.

However, with each step in on her radius, his features grew more and more insecure, falling into troubled lines. "Knight, do you have a moment to talk?" he broached softly, making sure not to come too near, either for her sake or his own. Or perhaps to keep the excitedly squirming Dogmeat from leaping up on him.

Ilya stood idle for a split-second, still comprehending the reality that it had been _him_ to come to _her_. She should have expected he would grab the situation by the balls. Danse wasn't the kind of man to let issues stew and build tension, if he could help it. It was one of the many things she admired about him, despite current circumstances.

"Yeah, of course, Danse," she responded with a soothing tone despite her flustered state, knowing this mustn't be easy for him.

Deacon stood there gawking until he realised his place. "Oh, I, uh, think I left my refrigerator open...yeah..." He was gone before either of them could fathom.

With his mistress distracted, Dogmeat leaped at the opportunity to greet his estranged pack member, skittering over to Danse with a submissive tail between his legs. Danse actually seemed pleased to see the canine, and gave a fond little hum as he knelt to pet along the scruffy mane. Dogmeat took that as acceptance and instantly perked up, going in for the kill with a sloppy tongue to the cheek and then for the mouth, as dogs tended to love doing. Danse was quick to stand again after that, brushing his mouth with an armoured thumb.

Ilya bit on a smile. "He does that because he sees you as a more dominant member of his pack," she provided quietly, glad that the time apart hadn't damaged their newfound bond.

He looked to her thoughtfully. "You know a lot about dogs."

"I'm a dog person," she shrugged guiltily.

"Then is it true that a dog's mouth is cleaner than a human's?"

"Nope. Myth. Sorry." She cringed in sympathy as the hope on his face died.

"Ah."

Dogmeat sat contently at Danse's feet, quite obviously aware of the tension between his two pack leaders as the silence lingered. It had been a good start, a way to break the ice, but now that it was down to serious business, they were both tentative.

"Should we go somewhere more private?" Danse finally suggested, looking at her with that anxious knot in his brow that always killed her.

Ilya nodded. "Behind the rocks." He followed her around the mass of jagged boulders and rocks, and she focused on the nostalgia of his heavy footfalls at her back and the reassuring shadow he cast over her, like a looming shelter of safety and guidance. She hadn't realised how much she missed the feeling of being followed by a stomping giant. She felt whole again.

They found an isolated spot, and Ilya moved to prop herself against one of the rocks, giving Danse an encouraging smile. He tried to smile back, but it was more of a twitch.

He hovered there as his eyes roamed her features in return. Apparently she looked like shit, as everyone kept saying, but there was more to his eyes than that. He was looking at her as if she was... gravely ill. Terminal, even. Then a brisk frown hit between his brows, and his gaze fell, studying the gravel beneath his metal boots for a great length before he cleared his throat to give voice to his thoughts. "As you've heard from me before, I'm not very good at these sorts of things," he started awkwardly, giving a heavy shrug in his armour. "But I trust you'll bear with me, unless of course I step over the line, in which case I'd completely understand."

Ilya frowned up at him. This didn't seem right. It sounded as though he was preparing an apology to _her_ , when she was the one in the wrong. "Hey, just take your time. You talk, I'll listen. I'll do anything to set things right between us."

He looked as though he hadn't expected her to speak just then. "I... appreciate you saying that. In truth, I didn't really know what to expect upon seeing you again, after the way I spoke to you last. Some of the things I said were undeserved, and I wouldn't have blamed you if you didn't want anything more to do with me."

Was he serious? He was actually apologising to her? Ilya had to bite down on her tongue to stop it releasing another interruption.

"I've had time to think on your actions that day, and consider from your perspective. We've been out here together for a long while now, working closely through some difficult situations and relying on each other in the thick of it, so it's no surprise that we'd established a close working relationship."

 _Is it so hard to just say 'friends?'_ He had fallen back into speaking as if reciting from a military manual, Ilya noted. It seemed to be a defence mechanism of his. Kind of endearing in a curious way, too. A lot of Danse's habits were oddly endearing.

"I realised it was wrong of me to have demanded you choose between my life and the lives of those anonymous soldiers, Brotherhood or not." He faltered a moment, creases making their encore as he concentrated on the gravel again before restoring eye contact with her. "I... find it all too easy to forget that you came from another time, another world, even. From listening to you speak of your past, it's clear your military held different ideals from that of the Brotherhood, at times valuing the lives of your fellow soldiers over mission success where the Brotherhood would place duty to a higher degree of value. Not that we abandon our brothers and sisters in favour of success, we're taught and trained to give our lives without hesitation for our soldiers in arms, it all depends on the circumstances, but generally—" he stopped himself short, and Ilya could actually see his self-reprimand in his eyes as he collected himself. "What I'm trying to say, is that I shouldn't have expected you to see things as cut-and-dry as I do. I put you in an impossible situation, and I apologise for that."

Ilya shook her head, standing and unfurling a sympathetic smile. "Danse, no, you don't need to apologise for anything. _I'm_ the one that put _you_ in an impossible situation by asking you to help with the heist in the first place. I had no right to ask you to betray your people. You were right, I was selfish. It was messed. I knew you didn't like it, but I kept pushing anyway. I took our friendship for granted, and used my advantage to get what I wanted. I took _you_ for granted." Every fibre of her being wanted to reach out to him and console away every trace of blame he placed on himself, but she kept within her boundary, doubtful of his reaction. "It was a bitch-move, and I'm sorry. I'll never ask you to do anything like that again, I promise."

He was moved by her words, she could tell by the way his brown eyes—flecked with vivid warmth in the sunlight—blinked it all in for rumination. She loved watching him think, he was such an emotive thinker. _God_ , it was so good just to be seeing him again, to be standing in his presence. She felt her depths blooming with a heatwave again and gathered a breath to quell the flutter in her belly.

"I appreciate that, Harper. Thank you," he responded politely, formally, like he did back when they were still acquaintances and stepping on eggshells around each other, trying to figure the other out without cracking something by mistake.

"So... are we good?" Ilya ventured with a shy smile, feeling her timidity return in his presence once more. What was it with this man that held such a powerful sway over her, reducing her to a she-mammal in heat with his primal allure?

But he sighed, a drawn-out, wilting sound, and it made her nervous, the heat vanishing from her loins. "I should also address the professional standard, here. I feel it would be inappropriate for me to continue as your mentor, seeing as our personal relationship has been compromised." Cold. Stern. Robotic. "I would commission a replacement myself, but given your military history, and your unique position within the Brotherhood, you could probably do without the formality at this point."

Ilya breathed and blinked, feeling a coldness slide through her gut as she let that sink in. She nodded with slow understanding. "Okay... I understand." _What the fuck. No I don't. I thought he was okay. I really thought we would be okay._

There was an elongated silence before he spoke again. "The raider—Clay-Crawler. I'm not sure if anyone from the Brotherhood noticed him, but nonetheless, I'm afraid I'll have to take him back to the Prydwen."

She was still grappling at the threads of his retirement from her. "Uh, sorry, come again?"

"Clay-Crawler," he repeated, tone a little sharper, obviously not a fan of having to repeat himself. "I'll have to take him in. We still need to monitor him closely for any changes in his mutation, and Maxson still believes he could have more value to come as an inside source of these Dark Blood raiders."

Damn it. After all that effort to free him, and Danse wanted to drag him back up there. She supposed she couldn't blame him for setting things right by the Brotherhood, this time. "Fine. I have some conditions to go over with Maxson on this, but I won't fight you on it, as long as you give me your word that he won't be harmed."

"Of course, you have my word. He'll be treated as a patient, not a prisoner."

Ilya wasn't sure if that was Danse himself speaking, or Maxson through his voice. She sighed, feeling disappointed and deflated, and not only because of Danse. She had taken Clay-Crawler on as his guider, much like Danse had with her, and she owed the raider more than just handing him off as a test subject again. "But... can it wait until after we've cleared out the quarry? The poor guy got sucker-punched by the bitch who enslaved him and then she got away, he deserves some vengeance on the fuckers down there."

Danse adopted a look of shellshock. "Wait, you're planning on going down there? In your condition? I don't think that's wise..."

"I'm fine," Ilya was quick to appease. "Scribes strapped and doped me up good. If you stabbed me, I wouldn't even feel it."

"That's... not very comforting," he countered, giving her a perturbed eye, clearly not even sure if she was joking or not.

She couldn't help but give a mild chuckle. "Seriously, I'm good. After all, I recall someone still wanting to fight even with both a bullet and a knife in their arm."

Danse was at a loss for how to react, her tact of deflecting with humour so out of place and obviously throwing him off. Really, he should be used to that from her by now, but apparently he wasn't. "Well, the situation was different," he responded defensively, "and we had few other combatants to take my place..."

"And your pride weighs as much as you in your armour..."

He took that in surprisingly good stride. "Perhaps... but this is beside the point, here. In your current state, I think it best you sit this one out. In fact, I insist. Elder Maxson made it clear before we deployed here that it was a top priority to see you safely back aboard the Prydwen."

Ah. The Maxson card. Ilya crossed her arms to reinforce her stubborn stand. "And what Maxson wants, Maxson gets."

Danse blunted her snide remark by twisting her point into agreement. "Without question. You should give it a try sometime. It makes life a lot less painful." Smartass. She eyed him narrowly, but he wasn't fazed, instead changing the subject. "Has Groves tracked you down, yet?"

"The star paladin?" Ilya confirmed, letting him get away it. "Oh yeah. We had a nice little chat. Charming woman. Just a ray of sunshine."

"Like I said, Maxson is determined for your presence." He said it with a faint scowl, as if to fortify the point. "I'm curious to hear how you managed to evade her. She's a force to be reckoned with at the best of times."

"And I'm not?" Ilya feigned offence.

"You're _something_ , and that's all I have to say on the matter." The cheek. He was toying with her now.

She arced a brow at him, then a smirk stretched her lips. "I pretty much told her where to shove it."

Danse nodded blandly, though a fleeting light winked in his eye. "That doesn't surprise me."

Her smirk melded with a genuine smile up at him. That whole exchange had just been teasing swordplay between them, swapping mild banter like old times. It had taken him a little while to get used to her teasing nature, and a little while more to begin participating in it, but he was getting snappier with his comebacks and burns, and today, she even felt proud of him for rolling with it even while things were strained between them. It was a good sign—the tension was beneath it all, but a good sign, nonetheless. Things were weird, but at least they could pretend they weren't.

"Well, I'm glad we talked. I should go get a team ready," Ilya dismissed herself, giving a faint smile before awkwardly bowing out and turning to leave. If they were going to part ways professionally, then she wanted to end their first talk on a good note before she put her foot in it and fucked it up all over again.

"Harper, wait," she heard from him, his tone hesitant. She turned in surprise as he stepped toward her again, eyes heavy with something she couldn't discern. "I... would like to accompany you. If you will allow it." Questions jumped to her tongue, along with a flush of delighted warmth to her cheeks, until he expanded himself. "To ensure the safety of the raider. It would be irresponsible of me not to, after agreeing to let him go down there with you."

Ilya caught herself and forced a quick recovery. "Sure. I think Clay can handle himself pretty well, but you're welcome to join us. Let's do this." Leading the way, she silently chided herself. Of course that's what he meant. She shouldn't have expected anything else. He wouldn't have stepped down as her mentor if he still wanted to work with her.

It got her thinking... was Danse only here to secure Clay, and herself, for Maxson's sake? Was he just... doing his job?

 _Get over yourself and your hopeless desires, Ilya. Nate, remember him, your dead husband? He was the only one for you, the only one who truly got you and accepted you for the fucked-up you that you are. Focus. Focus on what needs to be done. Remember, you're a weapon, nothing more._

* * *

 _ **-I'm so sorry for the delay. Some personal stuff has come up, and I'm still trying to get through it. I don't know how long it will be like this, and I can't promise there won't be more delays, but I can promise that I'll do my best not to let it affect the quality of the writing for you guys. Writing has always been an escape for me, as I'm sure it is with a lot of other writers too, so hopefully that will keep things running smoothly. I'm a bit nervous posting this in case the quality has dropped. I'm really sorry if it's noticeable. Please bear with me.**_

 _ **-The Maxson/Danse bromance thing... yeah it's been a little joke of mine for a while now, lol.**_ _ **(Unless it's also a community joke and I didn't realise it) I like making fun of characters I love, so don't worry it's not out of bad feelings toward either of them. Just having some fun at their expense :3**_

 _ **-I hope everyone who celebrates it had a great Easter. Also hope that people are enjoying the Automatron DLC :)**_


	21. Raiding the Raiders

**Chapter 21: Raiding the Raiders**

* * *

"Time to raid the raiders, and save the Ghouls."

Ilya's gaze was drawn to Deacon as he stood with hands planted on hips, road leathers reinforced with even more leather, shadowed like hers and matted to meld with the darkness. With the shades and wig, he looked like some sort of leather-clad secret agent from those comic books. "You're sounding keen for someone who likes 'long lazy dull days,'" she quipped.

"Hey, I'm a keen-bean when it comes to popping raiders. Just as long as I get to shoot from the shadows, or from behind a very, very thick wall."

Tightening the buckles of the leather padding around her shins and thighs, then checking her shoulder-guards, Ilya chugged the remainder of the water from a bottle and stood, flexing sore shoulders. "You better hope we don't run into any of the Dark Bloods down there, then. They'll chase you from your cover the moment they smell your blood."

Deacon swallowed his lower lip and created a suctioning noise. "Looking forward to meeting those guys..."

Ilya only tilted him a knowing look. She wasn't looking forward to meeting them again, either. They haunted her waking hours just as much as her nightmares. "Everyone ready?" She was rewarded with acknowledgements from the small squad she had chosen for the mop-up—mainly the heavy hitters. Deacon, who refused to let her go down there without him, Clay-Crawler, Hancock, Cait, Strong, MacCready, who had practically begged due to his love of caves from his childhood, Dogmeat, and Danse, who stomped up on her side.

"Locked and loaded," he confirmed with a hard, encouraging nod. She noticed he wasn't donning his helmet. Possibly due to the low-light levels underground, and the fact that he could blind his allies with his helmet torch in a single glance.

Ilya returned his nod, then surveyed her team as they stood near the mine entrance. "Where's Clay?"

They found him stooped near the giant death-cage that had been constructed over a fire-pit. A raider corpse lay beneath him, its limbs dismembered and mutilated.

 _Oh, fuck. Please don't be eating that_.

While the others hung back, Ilya approached him with tentative steps, peering over his armour's shoulder. His helmet was on, so he couldn't be eating anything. "Clay?"

The raider turned. The claw symbols and other odd markings he had carved into his armour were now painted in blood, darkened with several layers, crusting in dried places and dripping wet in others. In his hand was a dismembered finger, which he must have been using as a paintbrush.

"Blood of enemies gives power," he explained, voice so rich with purpose that it gave Ilya goose flesh. He finished one last marking by dipping the bloodied end of the finger into the corpse's open wound for hot, fresh blood, and then ran it through the marking to stain it. He stood to present himself to her. "Whisper like?"

Ilya regarded him in full detail. It honestly didn't disturb her as much as she thought it would, and it actually looked kind of badass, in a savage, bloodthirsty way. The Wastes had desensitised her to a lot of things, lately. "Whisper likes," she approved with surprise in herself.

The raider seemed to beam within his armour and stood up straighter, and she couldn't see his face, but she felt sure that he was giving her one of his creepy-as-fuck smiles. He offered up the severed finger, and she raised her brows at it, not sure what he wanted. Before she could stop him, he moved it toward her face and dashed twice beneath her eyes and up across her cheekbones, like warpaint stripes. Ilya stood prone afterward, taking stock of what he had just done to her. The blood was still warm, its sticky wetness clinging to her skin and making her detest the idea of even moving her face in the discomfort. Blood had splattered her face many times in battle, but to have it deliberated pasted on was a new experience.

"Blood bond," Clay-Crawler declared, pounding a fist to his chestplate with a heavy clash of metal, then pressing the same fist to Ilya's chest, much more gently. Even still, she had to catch her balance just to support the light impact. "We share blood of same foe."

Ilya was lost for words. Was this some sort of post-battle ritual? Was she supposed to do something in kind? He was just standing nodding at her. "Uh, okay. Blood bond. Sweet." She forced a smile.

Clay-Crawler just gave a pleased grunt like a caveman and nodded at her some more.

* * *

Entering the mines, the team was forced into single file through the initial narrow passage, with Danse naturally taking point. Ilya was close behind, falling into his shadow and footsteps with handgun at the ready. It hadn't even crossed her mind to challenge him for leadership, and she doubted it had crossed his mind to challenge her, either. They had formed a certain unconscious habit during their time together. Dark, narrow, little-to-no cover or room to manoeuvre—Danse was on point and calling the shots. Open, exposed, full of obstacles and opportunities—Ilya's playtime.

No playtime down here today though, Ilya's mind wandered in dejection. This place was desolate and eerie, the darkness seeming to slither in the corners of her eyes and the echoes of distant movements whispering along her nerve endings. The air was cold and damp with earthy decay, filling her nose with its musk, but she knew it would linger even heavier down in the deepest realms of the ancient quarry.

As soon as they could spread out and get a lay of the area, Clay-Crawler obliterated any tactical habits they had and rushed ahead down the passage, his power armour thundering through the surrounding rock. Before anyone could curse at him, he flipped a switch somewhere, and the entire area was lit up.

Everyone snapped into firing stances and scanned frantically in the sudden exposure, but their panic was soon allayed. The area was clear, devoid of any signs of life. Just quarried rock, and a pre-war setup labelled as '1.'

"Shite!" Cait caught her breath, lowering her shotgun with lip curled up in anger. "The stupid bugger! There goes any element of surprise we 'ad!"

"Shadows, Clay. _Shadows_ ," Deacon emphasised.

"Raider!" Danse growled next through clenched teeth. "Don't rush ahead like that. That's a sure-fire way of getting yourself and everyone else killed."

Clay-Crawler took all that with serious remorse. "Sorry! Not mean to anger!" His face illustrated his distress in wide-eyed guilt—Danse had advised he go without the helmet to prevent blinding his allies, just as he had. "Not mean to anger The Dancer!"

Danse only gave a grumbled sigh in response before dropping his voice to Ilya beside him. "Is it really that necessary to bring him along?"

"Give him a chance," Ilya said with a careful tone, trying to keep things from turning sour.

"He had his chance for vengeance, and it ended with him getting 'sucker-punched,' as you'd say..."

Ilya was ready to grin purely at the sound of the words 'sucker-punched' coming from Danse's lips, but Hancock jumped in and shattered any chance she had of keeping the situation light.

"Aw, what's the matter, crew-cut? Feeling threatened now you're not the only one here in power armour?" The Ghoul intended to shoot that out on his drive-by, but Danse wheeled on him swiftly, stopping him in his stroll.

"The only one here that should feel threatened is you, freak."

Hancock advanced in, no doubt with a revving silver-tongue, but Ilya was quick to slip between them. "Boys, please. Can we keep this civil?" Their glares skimmed over her head to meet, but both said nothing. Ilya swore under her breath at their stubbornness. "Or at least not kill each other before we make it five steps in here?"

Danse was the first to relent. "Fine. I'll do my part to cooperate. But if I spot any signs of him turning feral, I won't hesitate to pull the trigger."

Hancock parried with a grating laugh. "Hold your breath while you're waiting. I see any signs of _you_ turning asshole, consider the thought mutual." The glares made their comeback.

"Fuck sakes." Ilya shook her head and stomped off from the testosterone sandwich. She really didn't have the patience to be their mediator today. While everyone gathered their bearings and went about securing and inspecting the area, she honed in on the terminal propped up on a metal support beam. Explorer at heart, she activated it and raided its data.

 **Dunwich Borers**

 **Quality Cuts for Quality People**

Ilya scoffed at the peppy motto. Definitely pre-war. And those 'quality people' must have been the ones that hadn't been affected by falling salaries and poverty and civil strife. Just plaster over the problems with some spritely advertisements and false smiles and ignore the world's suffering underneath it all. That was the world she came from. God... she was musing too much.

"Oh god," MacCready moaned as he watched her, "You're going to stop and read every terminal in the place, aren't you?"

Ilya cast him a sideways grin. Always the impatient mercenary. "Snooping has its uses, you know?"

"Here, here," Deacon seconded.

MacCready grunted in annoyance, peering around for something to do while he waited. "Yeah, like slowing us down... and boring the heck outta me."

"Shush," Ilya said, still grinning. She tapped through the terminal's logs, not finding much of importance, until she came across some safety warnings left by the pre-war staff. Cautions about falling debris, and unstable railings. Great. No surprise, though.

She passed on the warnings to everyone.

"It might prove safer for you to take point across any railings then, Harper," Danse suggested, observing the ceiling of rock overhead with sharp eyes. "My power armour would likely shake everything loose if it's not properly secured. I'll take up the rear, just to be sure. I also suggest Strong and Clay-Crawler do the same."

Clay-Crawler was nodding to Danse, but Strong wasn't as quick to comply.

"Strong not like metal-man telling what to do."

"Strong," Ilya called firmly, "do as Danse says. Please."

The super mutant gave a low grumble, but acquiesced, though not before eyeing Danse with malice. Danse eyed him back, repulsion rolling off him, but he held his tongue.

Feathers were ruffled like all hell down here. Maybe it was a mistake letting Danse tag along...

With a troubled frown, Ilya turned back to the terminal, rifling through the remainder of the logs. Nothing else of use. Despite that, she didn't want to move out just yet, dwelling on all that weighed on her mind. But mainly just Danse...

As if reading her troubled mind, Deacon slinked up on her side, ever her shadow. "Look at all that rock," he mused in wonder at the display of incised earth around them.

Ilya afforded him a hum of acknowledgement as she watched Danse move ahead, his face grim, obviously now in a mood. She really couldn't care less about the rocks.

"Looks like quite an operation they had going here," Danse contributed to Deacon's musings. He was inspecting some of the pre-war machinery, eyes narrowed into the finer details of the mechanism.

"Nothin' says greed more than rippin' open the ground lookin' for goodies," Cait commented. Ilya couldn't agree more.

"Exactly my thoughts, Cait."

MacCready made a scoffing sound from across the way, where raiders had set up a campsite of sorts. "They should have been building a shelter instead of a quarry."

"The Brotherhood tried to run a quarry like this somewhere near the Capital Wasteland," Danse went on leisurely, and Ilya was surprised that he was even engaging in conversation with the others. "It was more trouble than it was worth," he added sorely.

"Huh, that so?" MacCready said with interest. "I never knew that. I grew up out in D.C," he explained for Danse's benefit. "Then again, I made a point of steering clear of anything to do with the Brotherhood."

And that was where the conversation flopped. Nice one, MacCready...

Deciding now was the best time to get moving, Ilya moved off from the terminal. But something made an odd click down by her feet. Frowning, she glanced down for the source. A weight scale. Shit.

Deacon was quicker to react, having already spied the grenade that was dropped from the trap above. "Ili, move!" He practically tackled her over, and they both crashed to the hard ground, Deacon covering Ilya beneath himself as the grenade fragmented and scattered everything at the station in a pocket-sized cloud of dust.

As everyone called for them in concern and rushed over, Deacon and Ilya were still climbing back on their feet, with Ilya rubbing the back of her head where she had whacked it against the cement, and Deacon rubbing his rear-end.

"Ow. Think something flew out and hit me on the ass," he complained, and Ilya saw his expression turn to shock behind his glasses before his hand came back bloody. "Aw, hell. Yeah, something got me, alright." He turned to present the wound to her. "See what it is?"

Despite the advent of the wound, Ilya couldn't restrain herself, coughing out a laugh. "Deacon, you have a pen in your ass."

"Huh," he uttered, as if impressed. "That's new."

Danse was less casual about the ordeal, eyeing the two, and then the weight scale culprit right beneath the terminal. Right there. In plain sight. Undisguised and for all to see and avoid. He looked back up to Ilya, and she cringed inwardly at what came next.

"Watch where you're stepping, damn it."

Scolded, Ilya ground her jaw as he stomped off and stood waiting for them to move out to the next area. He was right, that had been pretty slack on her part, but he didn't need to be such a dick about it.

Deacon yanked out the pen from his butt cheek and inspected it, then wiped off the blood, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. "Souvenir. For the survival story back at HQ."

Ilya sighed, patting Dogmeat to reassure him she was fine as she got moving. "Clay," she summoned, and the raider was all eyes and ears, eager to obey. "On me."

"Yes," he replied simply.

They moved through the area quietly, calmly, keeping a tight formation with eyes peeled for movement and ears pricked for giveaways to lurkers. Taking point, it was Ilya's responsibility to keep an eye out for traps, and raiders loved traps. How many times had Danse scolded her for tripping them and nearly getting them both blown to shreds? She had lost count. But he had triggered his fair share of mines, too, the hypocrite...

"Aha." Ilya held up a balled fist as she spied the next hidden trap just ahead. A bulky presence knocked into her back and nearly sent her sprawling into the trip-wire, but luckily she caught herself in time, spinning on Clay-Crawler. "Clay, the fuck?" she spat, shooting him a wild look as he gazed at her in confusion. "I said stop. This," she held up her fist to him, "this means stop. Fuck!"

He was beside himself. "Sorry! So sorry! Hurt you?"

"No," she sighed, hand pressing at her temple, making an effort to calm herself. "No. Just... watch where you're walking, okay?"

"Okay. Sorry!"

"I don't want to say I told you so, but..." Danse's voice tumbled out from somewhere in the darkness behind them.

 _Shut up, Danse._

Creeping toward the trip-wire, Ilya bit down on her tongue and concentrated on disabling the tricky mechanism. Her hands were shaking. She took a breath and exhaled slowly. Probably just tense from all the drama in the last five minutes... Trying to reassure herself with that, she swallowed, clenched her fists then flexed out her fingers, and tried again. This time, she worked the contraption with nimble fingers, having it disarmed in little time, and earning an impressed hum from either Deacon or MacCready back there somewhere. She couldn't discern.

The next zone, designated Station 2, was also clear of inhabitants. Ilya didn't like it. Raiders were usually eager for a fight, especially after losing their own. Fighting off a charging, enraged, grief-stricken raider was her main source of hand-to-hand practice and training. She had garnered the basics in her time in pre-war military training, but had gained her edge out in the Wasteland from pure experience.

She checked the Station 2 terminal, but the content was practically identical to the Station 1 terminal, save for a log thanking management for the new borer machine. She glanced over at it; it didn't look like much to her, just a metallic wreck stuck in the ground. Danse was inspecting it with interest, though. Typical man.

"It's quiet in here... too quiet..." MacCready suddenly came out with, before breaking out into giggles. "Oh man, I always wanted to say that."

"Feel fulfilled, now?" Deacon gibed.

MacCready thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, I do actually."

"I think being underground again has gone to your head, pal."

"I gotta be honest with ya, I feel more comfortable with a rocky ceiling above my head," MacCready then disclosed in a more serious manner, a hint of nostalgia in his voice.

"You miss Little Lamplight much?" Ilya asked him gently as she moved away from the terminal. It was nice chatting like this, with the chance for everyone to get to know each other better. Especially Danse. Maybe if he actually took the time to listen and engage with them, he might find that he really didn't mind them all that much, after all. Then, maybe they could all cooperate and things could go more smoothly down here. She could only hope.

MacCready gave a shrug, kicking at a loose rock and watching it skip away. "Every now and then I get this pang, you know? Don't really know if it's out of missing Lamplight or just missing being underground." He gave a small laugh. "Would never head back there, though. Too afraid they'd chase me off calling me a mungo."

"A mungo?" Ilya mimicked with a curious smile. "What's that?"

"Just this term for adults the kids all came up with," he enlightened them, a little embarrassed by it and rubbing the back of his neck. "No grown-ups allowed," he quoted from old memories with a faraway grin.

Ilya skimmed eyes over at Danse and noted that he was listening, but his expression was blank, unreadable. He probably just wanted to get a move on.

"Ahh, to be a ratty little kid again," Deacon sighed wistfully, but nobody made any sounds of agreement. Ilya stole quick glances at everyone and knew that most had not had ideal childhoods, from Danse being an orphan scavenging the streets, to Cait's domestic abuse and neglect. She felt for them all in that moment as a hush swept over them. Well, they were with _her_ , now, and as much as it was a dysfunctional family, she was going to try her damndest to make them all fit in together.

"Come on," she roused them with a flick of her chin, "let's keep moving." Just as she said that, the quarry roused with them, the rock trembling underfoot and groaning from its innards. Chips of rock clattered down from above, freeing shrouds of dust and gravel. Everyone stood exchanging chilled glances. Dogmeat gave a nervous whimper by Ilya's legs.

"Take it easy, guys. It's the norm when you're down this far," MacCready put them all at ease, brushing off stone from his duster.

Hancock was doing the same for his frock, then he angled a warning glare at Deacon. "You make one 'getting stoned' joke, and I'll do you in myself. I got no patience for lazy humour."

Deacon only raised his hands in surrender and choked off a guilty laugh.

They moved out by Ilya's lead, and the air carried less tension between them all now. Though Ilya knew that could change with a single poorly-thought-out comment from any one of them. The air was subtly growing denser and stale, and dropping in temperature, the cool drafts sneaking in through any cuts and slits in Ilya's vault suit to entice gooseflesh.

"Should have worn me woolly underwear," Cait shivered out. She was strapped up in a metal armour kit, which provided her little warmth.

They came to Station 3, where an expansive chasm yawned open and dropped down for maybe thirty metres. Rusted stair railings spiralled down along the outer rock walls, interspersed with chiselled-out ledges of stone where steel columns connected wirings for lights. Ilya approached the ledge and trained her handgun down into the darkness below, but couldn't pick out any details for the thickness of the dark.

Deacon was checking the terminal, while Danse was testing the stairway with the weight of his armoured boot.

"Appears to be stable," the paladin murmured, though his voice was edged in caution.

Ilya leaned her weight on it, then stepped up and got a look at the first stairway down. "Not too far down."

"Just be careful," Danse warned steadily.

"Maybe we should stay away from the ledge here. That'd be good." Deacon seemed uneasy as he leaned out to peek below, then quickly slipped back to a safe distance. MacCready gave him a slight shove and scared the shit out of him. "MacCready, I swear, if you do that again, I'll... I'll steal your hat and hide it in my pants."

"Honestly, this hat has been through far worse things than your pants."

"Ugh. Remind me never to touch that thing, then."

"Stay, Dogmeat." Ilya clutched at the railings and began her progress down the steps, careful of her boot placements.

"Don't slip," Hancock passed down out of concern.

She passed him back a thankful smile and continued, mindful of the slight creak that her weight was causing and the resulting vibrations of the stairway. She shifted her hand down the railing with each step, and became aware that it was shaking again, causing a minor wave of vertigo as she peered into the open space below. It seemed to stretch out as if to swallow her. She came to a halt and closed her eyes to block out the view. Strange. Heights had never been a problem for her before.

"Soldier?" Danse called down quietly.

Ilya opened her eyes, and for a brief flash, everything seemed to shrink before her and then expand, rushing back into place with a finishing snap. She jerked back involuntarily and caught her breath. Something was firing through her brain like hot adrenaline.

"Harper, what is it?" He was fretting now.

"Uh..." Ilya blinked rapidly to chase off the foreign sensation, both hands gripping the railings with a white-knuckled strength. "Dizzy," she sighed out, then shook her head. "Must be the height." She knew it wasn't. The trembling and sudden cold sweat under her vault suit spoke of something else, something that swelled through her blood with a mounting desire, a craving. It itched and it burned, niggled and tensed. She needed Jet. More.

"Just a few more steps to reach the ledge, then wait for me there," Danse instructed her firmly.

She shook her head in protest and took another step. "No, I'm fine. It's passed now."

"Wait for me there," he pressed, not having a bar of it.

She knew arguing with him would be futile, so she walked on without a word, reaching the ledge below and sidling up against the rock wall with a relieved breath. She concentrated on breathing while Danse worked his way down next. He was at her side before she knew it.

"Are you certain the height is all this is?" he questioned with a searching gaze, even through the darkness, eyes attempting to pick her apart piece by piece.

Did he suspect her? He was looking into her eyes so intensely, with a shade of knowing, and it _was_ picking her apart. Ilya tussled for composure. He couldn't find out about the chems. Ever. It would dishonour him even further, to have the knight under his wing lose herself to such a pitiful impulsion, to let herself get in so grungy a state. That was all she was, a worthless piece of scum, no better than a raider. He would hate her even more for it. She would be nothing but filth to his eyes.

"Talk to me, Harper," Danse was trying, tilting his head in an attempt to catch her eye, which had dropped to the ground. She searched for words, seeing his hand twitch at his side as she lingered still, as if he was contemplating touching her.

With a labour that dragged on her, she lifted her gaze to meet his and stood firm. "I'll be okay. Took a few knocks to the head in the fight back there, guess it's messing with my balance a little."

His concerned aspect remained, and a ripple of suspicion travelled his brow, but he withdrew his proximity as the others made their way down to meet them. "I think it would be best if someone else takes the lead. You're obviously in no condition for combat, much less out on point. If it were up to me, you wouldn't even be down here."

She detected the disapproval in his voice, and nodded wordlessly, averting her gaze in shame. He was right. She wasn't in shape to be taking the lead, both on point or authoritatively.

There was a moment of quiet before he spoke again. "Would anyone like to volunteer?"

Boots shuffled.

"I got no problems steerin' the boat," Hancock spoke up. "That is, if the tin-can ain't got any objections."

Danse didn't have much choice. He gave the Ghoul a reluctant nod and stepped aside to allow him past. "Just don't step on anything hazardous, Hancock," he tossed over his shoulder, and Hancock didn't miss the condescension.

"You just worry about yourself, crew-cut."

Ilya only ground her molars and rolled her eyes at their ongoing dick-sword fight. She hung back as everyone fell back into single file and continued the descent, the heavier squad members waiting it out to take up the rear. As Deacon passed, he sent Ilya a questioning thumbs-up, which she returned with a nodding smile. Finally, it was just her and Danse.

"Come on," he coaxed her supportively, "I'm right behind you."

As she tackled the railings once again, with Danse at her back to keep her safe, Ilya actually allowed herself to think that maybe, just maybe, now that he was taking charge of this mission, things would work themselves out and they would be in and out of here without any more hitches.

Oh, how she was wrong.

* * *

 _ **-A lot of the dialogue in this chapter is from actual scripted lines from the game. I thought it would be appropriate to include them. Danse's "Watch where you're stepping, damn it," when I trip a mine, cripple both legs, and am limping away near-dead, always makes me feel special inside. Fuck you, Danse :P**_

 _ **-Anyone else remember being called a mungo by young Mayor MacCready in Fallout 3? Takes me back, lol.**_


	22. Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

**Chapter 22: Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On**

* * *

The darkness was growing thicker, closer, crowding around her and weighing against her chest. It was like being underwater in the pitch black depths of the ocean, crushing with a frozen death-grip. Ilya's eyes darted as shadows wisped through the surrounds, so fleeting that she could never quite catch sight of them. They would flirt with the corner of her vision, then dive away before she could pin them, shy or devious or... imaginary.

Was she going insane?

Her mind seemed to lag behind as her body chugged on, moving down the steps on autopilot, hazing her vision and giving a grainy texture to the abyss. Maybe it was just the amount of Med-X streaming through her system; she had probably cut it close to overdosing. Maybe the cocktail of Jet and Med-X was just screwing with her brain. She would be more careful next time.

 _Next time?_ _Are you planning on welcoming Med-X into your dirty little affair with chems, now?_

 _No,_ another voice answered the other. _Only if things get too much for me. Cocktailing would be the easiest, most painless way to go out._

 _You're pathetic,_ the first voice took a bite. _Weak, selfish, yielding and pliant. A disgrace to those you keep locked up in your memories. Would Nate want this for you?_

 _He would understand. He wouldn't want me to go on suffering. He would want me to be there with him._

 _Bullshit!_

Another tremor in the rocks brought Ilya up short in her trance. The fingers of the darkness were still there, wrapping around her throat, slowly suffocating. Her hand whipped out to the railings, still feeble, still shaking.

"It's alright," Danse soothed at her back, "just a mild tremor. Nothing to be concerned about." His deep voice seeped through her skin and delivered oxygen to her blood. She could exhale smoothly and inhale again without the airflow catching dryly down her throat. That was all it took, just the sound of his voice.

"Need to get a grip on myself," she said with a small breathy laugh.

"There's no need to feel ashamed," Danse buoyed her in his usual steadying manner. "Many soldiers in the Brotherhood share a fear of heights, even aboard the Prydwen. Facing that fear is what separates the solider from the civilian."

 _But it's not really the height that's the problem..._

"Hey," Cait sent a whisper up from further down the stairway. "If you fall into the quarry, do I get yer stuff?"

"Go suck a fat one, Cait."

A soft burst of chuckles broke from the woman's chest before she turned to keep heading down.

Ilya was about to turn to thank Danse for his support and apologise for being such a wimp, when another shadow below caught her eye. She targeted it, pistol trembling in her grip, eyes squinting to cut through the murk.

"Hold up. You see that?"

Danse immediately snapped into combat-mode, followed her barrel with his laser rifle. "See what?"

Everyone else came to a halt and primed their weaponry.

"Movement," Ilya replied lowly. "A shadow."

He waited a moment, brows knitted in concentration. "I don't see it."

"There! Again!"

Nobody confirmed it. They stood on alert, straining into the depths. Couldn't they see it? It was a splash of black amidst a fluid mass of grey down there. Easily discernible. Easily the silhouette of a man, just standing there, as if waiting for them.

"I see you!" Ilya called out on impulse. "Come out slowly, or we'll open fire!"

The figure didn't respond, or even move. Nobody spoke or moved throughout the entire chasm.

"Hey!" Ilya barked sharply, patience wearing thin, "I'm talking to you! Come out, you fuck!"

Again, no response. The figure just remained there, calmly, as if he couldn't even hear her. She was ready to fire a warning shot, when Clay-Crawler went mad.

"Dark Blood coward!" he cried out, flinging himself over the railing and leaping from the stairway, plummeting down into the dark below. There was a heavy impact and a cloud of dust, then his charging warcry.

"Clay!" Ilya screamed, but it was too late. His presence below had triggered something, and a chain of explosions tore up through the rocky chasm, blasts of fire eviscerating the darkness. Everyone dove for any form of cover as the effect shot out chunks of debris and shifted the magnitude of weight above them all.

Ilya didn't even know how she had ended up sheltered under Danse, his armoured hands covering her head against his torso as he knelt over her, but she was thankful as a deluge of stone and grit pounded onto them. They both coughed as dust invaded their airways. In fact, everyone was coughing.

There was a break amongst the horrid crumbling of earth, and Ilya stirred from beneath Danse's protection, peering around to catch a glimpse of the destruction. It wasn't over yet, something deep in her natural instincts warned her it wasn't. There was a far-off murmur within the mines, a deep, ominous, almost demonic rumbling that raised the hairs along the back of her neck. The railings beneath them were subtly wavering, unstable. The very air around them was unstable.

"Danse..." her voice quavered a nervous warning, and he seemed to sense it too, his hands grasping her more securely against his form. She clasped the plating over his forearm.

Then it all caved in from above; boulders of stone groaning in their freedom as they gave in to gravity's plea. The crash of rock against rock was deafening.

For Ilya, everything happened in a crescendo of motion and terror as she had little control. Danse had burst into action by scooping her up in one arm and gathering her in a ball against his chest. She saw him vault them both over the railings with his free hand where they fell through the dark, and she shut her eyes tightly as the rush dropped both her stomach and her sense of reality. The greeting with the ground made her head thwack against Danse's armour, colours bursting inside her head as he lurched back into some form of cover. She could barely see through her own haze.

There they waited it out as their environment continued its tantrum, throwing down tonnes of rock to imprison them. Danse had Ilya squished up against the wall so firmly she could hardly move a muscle, knees drawn up into her stomach, not a limb exposed for the rockslide to bite into and crush to the bone. The hard planes of his armour dug into her bruised flesh. She had hidden her face in the Brotherhood insignia on his chestplate, and it felt as though he had bowed his face into the crook of her neck, his warm, adrenaline-paced breath dusting over her skin there.

She clung to the forced intimacy of their safe haven, blocking out any thoughts of reality: what had happened to the others, were they still alive, would they all be buried down here?

 _Don't think. Don't think. Don't think._

So her hands reached for Danse, one, the fingers curving over the edge of the steel panel atop the chestplate, the other, to his neck, fingers slipping up underneath the fabric of his hood to make contact with his hot skin. She needed that, more than ever, to feel something human with her touch, to draw from the empathy it provided.

She felt him lift his head and turn his gaze on her, so she matched it, and their eyes met, pupils expanding to take in the sight of each other by the sole light of her Pip-Boy. She decoded many things in his brown eyes as they sunk deeply into her own. Fear, surprise, wonderment, curiosity, and then... magnetism. It sparked in his eyes like fire, with a backdrop of mourning, as if he thought that they wouldn't get out of this alive.

Her heart thumped a renewed beat, not for survival, but for _him_. Her hand snaked further up along the back of his neck, to where his hair began its trail of growth, and her fingertips shivered at the mere realism of touching him. She watched with a yearning as empathic furrows formed above his brow, and she caught his line of sight flicker down to her lips, so briefly she might have missed it if she had been furthermore lost in his eyes.

Was she reading him right? Did he really desire her?

Even as the earth finished its violence around them, they remained lost in each other's eyes. Ilya was only vaguely aware of the stillness beyond; she was consumed by Danse's unbearable nearness, the intensity of his focus that somehow reached deep within her, and the way he began to move in for her lips.

 _Oh god. Please kiss me._

A cough resounded through the cave-in. "Hey! Anyone alive?"

It was Deacon. They both balked, and Danse withdrew at once and pushed up to a stand, a hand offered to her for aid. Ilya took it and was pulled to her feet, struggling to demolish lingering emotions before calling out in response. "Deacon, Danse and I are okay. Where are you?"

"Thank Atom," Deacon breathed out in relief at her response. "I'm, um... well I don't really know where I am, to be honest. Somewhere rocky and dark. You guys alright?"

"We're fine. What happened to the others?"

"Dunno!" he called, grunting as he tried to shift something heavy. "I saw Strong grab MacCready and Cait before the railings gave way. Dogmeat tried to follow you two down. No idea what happened to Hancock..."

"Oh, god," Ilya whined quietly, cradling her head in her hands to process the implications. The very thought of them being buried alive, slowly being crushed to death or asphyxiated, was too much to bear. Danse took on a look of desolation, eyes seeking the ground, then they hardened.

"Deacon, stay put. We'll come to you," the paladin ordered, turning from Ilya to scan the collapse behind them for a weak spot.

"No arguments here," Deacon relayed back.

"Harper, your light," Danse requested. She proffered up her Pip-Boy for him, revealing the craggy surface of the compacted stone around them. There were nooks and crannies that they could exploit, chunks that could be shifted to free space. Danse's power armour would come in handy for the heavy lifting.

His metal hands explored the vertical landscape with attentive care, then, having picked out a spot to begin, he wrapped steel fingers around a protruding rock. "Stand back," he advised, and Ilya did so, keeping her arm extending to give him light. He pulled, heartily, and the rock gave way, releasing a minor avalanche that tumbled into his armour. He bore it with ease.

After a lot more pulling, pushing, bashing, and kicking, they had broken through the pile and tunnelled their way out, finding themselves standing upon a small mountain of rubble. Above their heads, a gaping reversed crater showed just how much of the quarry had collapsed atop them. The surrounding railings were knocked free and either dangling by single steel bars or had completely succumbed to the cave-in, buried beneath the rubble.

"The raiders must have had this prepared even before the assault commenced," Danse commented, brows drawn in obvious anger. "If only Clay-Crawler hadn't rushed ahead like that, we might have spotted the trigger and prevented all this."

Ilya said nothing. He was in his rightful place to be angry, Clay-Crawler really had fucked up. Big time. She wondered what had happened to him, whether he was still underneath all this, or had managed to scramble to safety. He hadn't answered Deacon's call, so if he was still alive, he must be unconscious. Like the rest of them seemed to be. Poor Dogmeat...

"Sound-off, Deacon," Danse called, knocking Ilya from her reverie.

"Over here," Deacon provided, a little flatly. "Or more, under here."

Danse zeroed in on the location, carefully picking his way over the unstable rock to begin hauling off the weight, grunting in the effort. Ilya did what she could to help, but her mortal strength provided little aid, and she found with the more effort she put into the task, the more her head wavered and overflowed her vision with a grainy whitewash.

She stood back to steady herself, but the head-rush of simply straightening up almost had her keeling over, momentarily blinded, limbs slack and losing touch of balance. She pinched at her tear ducts with thumb and index, focusing on breathing until her sight returned. What the hell was wrong with her brain?

Danse had heaved off the final boulder, brushing at the air to chase away the dust and reveal a very dusty and dishevelled Deacon. He coughed and stumbled forward, his glasses, impossibly, still in place.

"Never thought I'd be so glad to see your face, Danse," he gave an offhand greeting.

"Likewise," Danse responded in kind.

Ilya was less guarded with her emotions, rushing Deacon with an embrace that had him take a step back to brace himself.

"Whoa, easy," he chuckled, then she felt him relax into the embrace as he fell silent, and actually close his arms around her in return. So hugging _could_ be his thing, after all.

"Are you hurt?" she asked as she pulled away, checking him over.

"Nah," he shrugged dismissively, "just a few scrapes and dings." He gave her the once-over too, then looked over her shoulder at Danse. "Though I wish I'd had my own paladin to carry me off to safety, as well," he added with a pouting tone.

Ilya couldn't bring herself to turn to see Danse's reaction, but she suspected he had shot Deacon an offending scowl, because Deacon only smiled in his silence.

The three set about searching for the others, calling for them repeatedly, digging through the rubble, listening for any minor movements, all the while with a cold anguish settling in their stomachs.

* * *

 ** _-Thanks for reading, I really hope everyone is still enjoying. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to make the reading more enjoyable, or if you feel I'm taking this in the wrong direction. I'm always open to suggestions and constructive criticism._**


	23. Lost Soul

**Chapter 23: Lost Soul**

* * *

Ilya felt her head swimming in the dark, now and then hitting her with a sense of disembodied awareness, like she was dreaming and simply watching from inside her body as it operated of its own accord. Not only that, but every time she caught Danse's eye, her pulse spiked, and in turn, that brought on a headache to keep her vertigo company. She needed to stay focused.

"Deacon, how did you end up down here with us, anyway?" she queried to keep herself distracted while they were searching the rubble. Already, her muscles were screaming in protest each time she hoisted up rock. Her back was no exception.

"I was on the railings when they came loose," Deacon explained with a sigh of remembrance. "Whole fricken thing came down under me. I got lucky, though—rolled under it and used it as cover."

Ilya was nodding her head, the event playing out in her imagination. "The others... did you see if they got off the railings in time?"

Deacon plonked a substantial rock down and stood in thought, stretching the muscles in his lower back with a grimace. "Pretty positive they didn't jump down like you two, but I didn't have enough time to see if they went down with the railings. Strong grabbed Cait and MacCready behind me and pulled them back... They _might_ have gotten back to the ledge in time..." his voice trailed off as he peered up, toward what was left of one of the stone ledges. Both her and Danse followed his direction.

"It's possible they could still be up there," Danse voiced their collective thoughts.

Then came the obstacle—how to get up there.

"We could climb up the rocks there," Ilya pointed, then brought her fingernail back to her tooth in thought, "but there's still a big height to get up to the ledge..."

Danse hummed. "This might not be the safest idea I've ever conjured up... but I could attempt throwing you up there."

Ilya cast the paladin a thoughtful look, then exchanged one with Deacon, who was giving a nodding shrug, and she mimicked him in agreement. "Good thinking, Danse."

"I have my moments," he quipped dryly as he picked his way across the rubble and toward the tall pile of rocks stacked up beneath the ledge. "Now, I suggest Deacon goes up first. For obvious reasons." Despite making the claim for obvious reasons, Ilya wasn't sure he meant simply because Deacon was a man and therefore more able to pull himself up and then give her a hand up behind him, or because she was injured, apparently afraid of heights—then again, so was Deacon—and had virtually no muscle mass since dropping in weight. Neither reasons offended her, they were both true enough, so she let it go.

Deacon pushed up his leather sleeves and stretched his limbs like an athlete before approaching. "Time to shine," he prepped himself. "How do we wanna do this thing, Danse?"

"I think a good old-fashioned boost-up should do it." Danse then conjoined his hands, weaving the fingers together with palms up for Deacon to step into.

"Okey-dokey." Deacon sounded a little hesitant, but he went ahead and stepped aboard, a hand on Danse's shoulder for balance. Ilya watched in fascination. The two had never worked together so cooperatively before. Her two closest pals, actually getting along with each other. Out of necessity, but still...

Danse counted down to three, then propelled the spy up with a powerful thrust. Deacon soared, letting loose a startled holler at the rate of which he ascended. His hands reached for the ledge, but failed to latch on and he fell straight back down in a heap amongst Danse's arms.

Ilya chuckled in her chest. It was almost romantic.

The two hurried to be free of each other, then prepped themselves for another go. This time, Deacon knew what to expect, and managed to grip the ledge and swing a leg up, rolling over in success. He cheered for himself, then called down the good news.

"Hallelujah! Good-guy Strong, with Cait and Macs snuggled up underneath, having a good old nap. Some rocks fell on 'em, by the looks. I'm gonna need a hand throwing them down, especially with Strong. Guy probably weighs half a tonne."

"I'm on my way up," Ilya called back, letting relief wash over her at finding them. Now they just needed to find Hancock, Dogmeat, and Clay-Crawler. _Please be okay._

Danse gave her a small nod before she stepped up into his hands, no visible sensitivity toward her after their moment during the cave-in. He always had a knack for veiling himself in a professional facade. Ilya focused on the here-and-now, that ledge the only thing in her focus as Danse began a countdown. She sailed up smoothly, a little higher than Deacon had, and caught the ledge under her arms. That went well, but holding herself up proved a problem, her hands scrabbling for leverage as she began to slip back.

Luckily, Deacon was there in a flash and clutched onto her arms, hauling her up without much struggle. "Gotta work on that upper body strength," he taunted her softly. She only eyed him a sour expression.

Together, they pulled off the small landslide from Strong, rolled him over, and dragged out MacCready and Cait, checking them over for injuries. Danse told them to check their pupils were responsive, to keep their spines as level as possible in case of breaks, and to check for fluid or blood leaking from ears or noses. The big mutant was fine, and had served a good padding for the other two. They were fine, aside from being knocked out cold, either from taking a rock to the head, or from Strong bodyslamming them to the ground.

They were about to drop Cait off the ledge for Danse to catch below, when she gave a muffled groan and uttered something that sounded like a curse.

Ilya leaned down and took the woman's shoulder in her grasp. "Cait? Cait can you hear me?"

"Ye," Cait grumbled and strained open her eyelids. "Holy shite, turn those lights down."

Ilya moved her Pip-Boy away and smiled. "You're gonna be fine. We just need to get you down from this ledge. You might pee a little, though." Without warning, her and Deacon dropped her off before she could protest, and Danse caught her with ease, enduring her string of curses as he helped her over to a corner free of rubble.

MacCready was dropped off much the same, but Strong, however, took a lot of effort rolling him to the ledge, and a fair amount of bracing and preparation from Danse.

"Look, I know you hate the big guy's guts and all," Deacon started in a mocking lecture, "but there's no need to 'accidentally' drop him or not catch him."

Danse threw up an offended glare. "The thought never even crossed my mind." Before they could send the mutant down, Danse added to his thought pattern. "Though that _is_ an excellent idea, thank you for bringing that to my attention, Deacon."

Looking down on him, they saw his fixed expression suddenly make way for a rare sardonic grin.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to drop him," he reconciled slowly, as if they were gullible, illiterate children.

Deacon leaned back from the ledge and looked to Ilya beside him, flummoxed. "I don't trust him."

She laughed softly and shook her head. "Come on, let's send the big guy on his way."

So Strong was rolled off. Danse caught him heavily, the weight pushing him down to his knees. He half-carried, half-dragged the super mutant over to where he had placed the others, and then moved back to catch Deacon and Ilya as they leapt down.

Even caught and draped in his arms in that stereotypical scene of romance, Danse showed no signs of awkwardness or abashment, and set Ilya down, not with detachment, but simply just with normalcy. It got her doubts racing in full-swing. Had she simply just imagined the spark back there? She was sure she was seeing shadows that weren't there, and a war of some kind was ravaging her head, so maybe she had imagined that look in his eyes, imagined those eyes flit to her lips, imagined him moving closer.

"Should we try to wake them up?" Deacon asked as he hovered over MacCready and Strong, pushing up MacCready's nostrils and wiggling the nose to amuse himself.

"They're probably concussed," Ilya mentioned as she gnawed her thumbnail nervously.

"If so, there's nothing we can do for them down here," Danse decided. "Right now, it's more imperative that we find the others as soon as possible."

So they got back to the search, sweat soon beading their foreheads and drenching their clothing. By now, Ilya was feeling sick to the stomach thinking of losing Hancock, Dogmeat, or Clay-Crawler. She tore at the broken earth in the area they had found Deacon, hoping Hancock hadn't fallen far away. Her fingernails were shredded and bleeding at this point from clawing in and ripping away, arms throbbing in both muscles and joints, back cramping worse than any moontime she had experienced before, and mind numb save for a constant mantra: _keep digging, keep digging, keep digging._

Despite the physical pain, it was mentally as easy as running endlessly across the Wastes with little sustenance. It was all about removing herself from the equation. What did her needs matter when that of the Commonwealth was so much greater? The same could apply here. What did her ailments matter when her friends desperately needed her?

"Here, found something," Danse summoned, chucking off a huge hunk of stone and letting it crash aside, awakening plumes of dust.

Ilya and Deacon rushed over to lend a hand, pawing away the remainder of small rocks. A tuft of golden fur sprang free, sending Ilya into a frantic desperation as she worked to reveal the rest of Dogmeat. Connected to the fur was a vest of metal dog armour, the weight of the rocks buckling it in several places, bending back any protruding pieces. There was no movement.

 _No no no no._

Suppressing an abrupt sob, Ilya clawed off one more rock until the canine's head was freed. She froze in place, stared at him. The eyes were wide open, empty, unseeing, mouth ajar with dry tongue splayed beneath it.

"Dogmeat," Ilya cooed hesitantly, trying with all her might to keep the tremble from her voice.

He didn't move.

"Dogmeat," she tried again, more forcefully, "come on, boy." Her hand reached out to him, for his exposed fur, coarse at first but soft beneath the thickness. "Wake up. You're free now." Tears of knowing were welling beyond her control.

Both Danse and Deacon remained still on either side of her, then she felt Deacon place a soft hand to her shoulder. That simple action made it more real, more true.

She shook her head. Biting back tears, her bloody fingers splayed through the fur on Dogmeat's neck, searching for a pulse. She couldn't find one.

"Wake up, Dogmeat," she keened gently in denial, failing to keep the quiver from her vocals now. "Wake up. You can wake up, now. We found you. Don't sleep." A sob broke from her chest. "Please don't leave me." She stroked lovingly at his soft fur, nostalgically, then behind the ears, where it was always the softest, where he loved her to scratch him the most. Then her fingers ruffled through his thick, coarse mane once more, before she leaned in to press her forehead to his, like she always did. As she drew away, her tears plopped down on his head. He remained still.

"I'm sorry, Ili," Deacon offered, hand now squeezing her shoulder.

She barely felt it. All she could think about was how she would never again wake to see Dogmeat's happy brown eyes staring at her with excitement, or how he wouldn't be there to greet her first thing when she arrived home by jumping all over her and wiggling in his glee. She hated seeing him just lying there, empty, soulless, gone. _My baby. My poor little baby._

Fresh tears exploded from her waterline as it all hit harder, and she succumbed to more sobs, fingers absent-mindedly scratching at her knees as she knelt and rocked in place. "No. Not Dogmeat. Not Dogmeat," she mewled over and over, words strangled by the constriction in her throat. "Oh, god. Please, no."

She was distantly aware of Danse saying something to Deacon, then she felt compassionate hands gather her by the shoulders and draw her up and away from Dogmeat's body. Deacon was saying things to her, softly and repetitively, but she couldn't listen, couldn't focus on his words, as he led her over to the others and sat her down beside Cait up against the stone wall. Cait crooned something as she pulled her over to rest her head on her shoulder, and Ilya let the woman wrap her arms around her and sway in a soothing movement. She was almost motherly in her consoling, but it didn't reach Ilya.

She watched through glazed eyes as Danse dug out and lifted Dogmeat's limp body, carrying it carefully, mournfully, back over to them and placing it down in an almost sacramental manner. He looked around thoughtfully for a moment, careful not to connect eyes with Ilya for reasons beyond her, and then grabbed at MacCready, peeling his duster off—with Deacon's help—to then spread over Dogmeat's body out of respect. MacCready would get over it.

Seeing Danse pay so much mind to honour an animal in death was moving. Ilya sniffed and blinked out tears, letting them roll down her cheeks numbly, without care. She saw through a cleared vision that Danse's face was lacerated by grief, as much as he tried to conceal it. In fact, Cait had crimson eyes, and Deacon looked pale and solemn. Everyone had grown fond of Dogmeat throughout their time in Sanctuary. It was hard not to fall in love with the unique canine.

Danse finally locked eyes with Ilya. There was so much hurt hidden in them, it even took her aback for a moment.

* * *

Once Ilya had composed herself enough to stand, she was up and wrecking rock again with a vengeance, part steaming, part crying. Her emotions were such a whirlwind that she didn't know which part of herself to withdraw into—depression or fury. The two hemispheres seemed to be colliding, grinding into each other and distorting themselves into a mangled psychosis. She wanted to scream, beat at something, inanimate or living, rave at the peak of herself, but she couldn't reduce herself to such madness in front of everyone. So she resorted to beating the shit out of the rubble and exerting herself to oblivion.

Eventually, her ravenous effort for shifting rock drew Danse's attention from his own turmoil, and he worked his way over to her.

"Harper," he began cautiously, stepping into the light of her Pip-Boy. "I think you should have a rest. Deacon and I can pick up the slack."

She shook her head without hesitation, not really listening to him. "No, I can't rest. They're still under here. Every moment counts." They had unearthed the globular machine in the centre of the area, and were working their way around it. Hancock hadn't been anywhere where Deacon was found.

Danse was silent for a moment, then tried again. "Your fingers are bleeding. At least let me patch them up."

"Waste of time. They'd just start bleeding again."

Again, a length of silence, then he sighed earnestly and employed another tactic, a heartfelt one. "I know you're upset about Dogmeat," he ventured tenderly, but head-on, not wasting either of their time by being sensitive about the matter, "but running yourself down won't help when it comes to avenging him, and I know you; I know vengeance is on your mind. If you want to continue this mission, then I'll be right behind you every step of the way, one hundred percent. But you'll need your strength to fight efficiently when we finally track this rabble down."

It made her stop and stand straight to face him. There was an ember in his eyes, for vengeance, also, just as he'd said. She gauged him for a long, steady moment, their aspirations seeming to bridge the distance between them and entwine a mutual purpose in fire, then she nodded wordlessly. Dogmeat would be avenged, in blood and fire and torment, as much as she could humanly dredge up and lash out with. She felt her fists crunch as her commitment to this hardened and set in place like the stone surrounding them. She'd make those motherfuckers pay tenfold.

Before Danse could claim success of the moment, hurried panting broke through the dark, originating from the closed passage that led further into the mines.

"Well, aren't you folk a sight for sore eyes," a raspy voice spoke.

Ilya flashed out her Pip-Boy light, jaw slack at the sight of Hancock supporting a lank and armourless Clay-Crawler. The ghoul gave a wry grin and a fleeting two-fingered salute.

"Wh— but, how?" Ilya stumbled, caught somewhere between elation and bewilderment.

Hancock first shrugged off the raider, who slumped to the ground under a seemingly dud leg. Not expecting that to happen, the ghoul looked down in surprise, then shrugged and gave Ilya back his attention. "Believe it or not, I can be pretty agile given the right incentive. Ran through the shit-storm to try to stop this idiot from causing any more damage, and actually got out of harm's way. Got a nasty scrape on my back from one bitch of a rock, though." He tried to reach back to rub it.

Clay-Crawler hopped back to his feet, a sheepish disposition about him. "Not mean to cause cave-in. Wanted to catch Dark Blood. Couldn't find. Chased down passage, long way. Wanted to kill before he could tell others. Didn't find. Fight many ferals, though."

Ilya scowled at the raider, his excuse undeserving of a response.

Hancock went on to expand that. "I chased him quite a ways further down the tunnels. Little shit is fast. We ended up scrapping it out with some ferals, alright. Some of the bastards tore off Clay's armour. One of the legs is fucked. Took us this whole damned time just to pry him free of it. After I slapped him around a bit, just a bit, not too much," he insisted, "I dragged his ass back here to see if we could find you lot. Had to leave the armour behind."

"Broke armour. So sorry," Clay-Crawler uttered bravely.

Ilya noticed how Danse's metal fists coiled, just like her own. She had to fight just to keep her tone level. "Dogmeat's dead. Strong and MacCready are out cold. Cait's concussed." She watched hollowly as their faces fell lax.

"Aw shit, Ilya..." Hancock managed, stepping forward. "I'm sorry to hear that. I know how fond you were of that pooch." She lowered her head and let him come closer to wrap her in a consoling embrace. They'd hit a milestone of how often hugs were given out among them today. Despite Hancock's show of support, she was still tethered to a hardened coping mechanism, and couldn't bring herself to fully absorb his offering. If she did, she would crumble, and her progression would be annihilated. As much as she wanted to crumble into him, she only accepted him by faintly returning the embrace, nothing more.

Releasing her, he didn't seem offended, just lent her an uplifting smile, black orbs for eyes teeming with sympathy, and rubbed her shoulder. Good old Hancock.

Clay-Crawler approached once the ghoul had stepped aside. His head was bowed with guilt. "So sorry. Not mean to cause death..."

"Your reckless actions _directly_ resulted in a death, raider," Danse growled, the thorn in his tone sharp for all to feel.

"Wanted to catch Dark Blood. Make Whisper proud," Clay-Crawler tried to explain.

Ilya couldn't even look at him, gazing off into the dark, feeling her face twitch and contort in a simmering rage beyond her restraint. "It's your fault," she branded him coolly, despite her interior.

He dared not look at her either, keeping his head bowed. "Yes. My fault. Always my fault. Me: idiot, stupid, not worthy of life. Sad excuse of a man. Always failing, always making mess. Should kill myself."

His morose admission just roused her anger further. Did he have to be so flaccid, so submissive? It was like he just gave up in the face of his mistakes, not willing to accept responsibility and right his wrongs. He just wanted to give in, sulk and pity himself like a child, maybe as a way to guilt-trip her into feeling sorry for him. The little self-absorbed fuck!

"Dogmeat's dead because of you!" she accused again, raising her voice an octave. He needed to get it through his skull. She had to make him understand. "It's your fault! All of this! Do you get that? Do you FUCKING get that!" Clay-Crawler was shrinking the louder her shouts climbed, flinching when she snapped her syllables and growled her emphasis. "He's dead! Gone! He didn't have to be, but he is, because of you!"

He gave a trembling nod. "Yes. I will kill myself now."

She watched in a wild, disbelieving rage, as his bony hand actually reached down for the pipe pistol in his holster. "No!" she shrieked, lunging for his wrist and wrangling it up between their faces, clamping it in her grip as hard as her spent muscles would allow. "You don't get to do that! You don't fucking get to take the easy way out, you pathetic piece of shit!"

Danse and Hancock stood on either side of them, supervising the exchange, visibly bracing to break up anything that escalated too far. Deacon was offside, slowly closing in on the situation. They seemed to understand that this needed to happen, that the ugliness needed airing, that Ilya needed to vent and Clay-Crawler needed to understand the consequences of his actions.

Within Ilya's wiry grip, Clay-Crawler appeared on the verge of tears, withering under her intensity. "So sorry, Whisper. Just want to make it right. Want to make you happy."

"Then be a man!" she screamed, still crunching his wrist in her bloody claw. "Damn it, just grow up! Take responsibility and make up for Dogmeat's death! I don't know how, but find a way! You can't just run from your shit! He didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve to die like that! You took him from me." She released him then, giving back his arm with a violent shove and stepping away, suddenly overcome with fatigue. "He was my baby. He didn't deserve any of this... He was my baby."

Suddenly, all of her collective grief came crashing down, hitting her from all sides without mercy. Shaun. Nate. Dogmeat. Those Brotherhood soldiers. Her old life and the people in it. The darkness was cramping her again, seeking out her vulnerability and taking hold. She couldn't continue to breakdown in front of them all. She had to get away.

Spinning, Ilya fled the open area and pushed through the rackety wooden door leading down the passage further into the mine. It did no good, her own presence was hounding at her heels like a rabid dog.

 _You're so weak, running away like a child, hiding like a little bitch because you're not strong enough to cope. Just like every other piece of dead weight in this world. You think you're different? Special? Worthy of making a difference? You're not. You're nothing._

Ilya clutched at her skull, ragged nails splitting the skin, smashing her eyes shut, willing it away. _Go away. Just go away._

 _You're a fucking hypocrite. You told Clay-Crawler to man-up, now it's your turn. Stop denying it, face it. You're nothing. A waste. A steaming pile of shit not worth shitting out. So do something about it._

 _Go away. Go away. Go away._

 _Fuck you._ You _go away. Do it. End it. End it now. You want to, don't deny it. It'll be quick if you want it to be. Even painless, because you're a little bitch. Just do it._

It just wouldn't stop, kept coming in loud waves, crashing against her skull, trying to get in. She gnashed her teeth together and sent her boot into the nearest wall, the impact pushing a volt up through the bone, but it wasn't enough. She kicked again, harder, trapping in a raving growl with her teeth.

 _Go away!_

It still wasn't enough. She couldn't stop herself any longer, fingers pursuing Jet from a pocket in her armour. Dragging on it brought an instant remedy to her woes. The presence went away, the pounding against her skull halting mid-pound. She could always count on Jet, it never failed her. So what if this was her third hit today? Today was a big fuckup from the moment the sun crested. She needed it. No way she would have been able to get through without it. She'd just go clean tomorrow to make up for it.

Fuck it. Worry about that later. Just enjoy the buzz right now, let it flow, let it thrive and burst with that decadent high at the end. Let it banish the pain.

She pressed her palms into the wall and leaned in, drooping her head and smiling to herself, giddy and consumed. Oh god this was amazing. Everything was gone. Her and Hancock should trip together again sometime.

"Oi! Just what in the hell do you think yer doin'?"

Vaguely shocked, Ilya turned to Cait, finding herself confronted by her disgusted expression. "Hmm?" she managed, staggering for her balance.

Cait stomped in on her and snatched the Jet inhaler from her hand, quickly stuffing it into a pocket of her own. "After everythin' we went through together to get me clean of that garbage, and now yer indulgin' yerself?" she snapped quietly to keep the others from hearing. "Just what the fuck is wrong with you? You saw what gettin' hooked did to me."

Cait was furious, Ilya's subconscious knew, but she was in too deep to really care. "Give me a break. I just want to be alone."

"Nup," Cait declined the idea. "Like hell. Yer gettin' cleaned up. When we get outta this shitehole, you and me, we're gonna traipse back to that vault and plug you into that machine that fixed me up. No arguments. I don't wanna hear it."

"It's not even that bad," Ilya slurred, teetering back to lean against the wall. "I'm not an addict. This is a treat. A rare thing."

Crossing her arms, Cait considered with narrow eyes. "You know, the first thing an addict learns is how to lie. Includin' to herself."

Ilya sighed, languidly. "Not lying."

"That's total bull, and we both know it," Cait was quick to cut her to strips. "And yer not even good at keepin' it under wraps. You nearly had Danse chasin' you in here. I had to tell him to sod off, that this called for a lady's touch. How do ya think he would have taken to seein' you jacked up on this shite, eh? The stiff bastard's about as fun as a molerat on a stick. He'd have dragged you outta here by the ear and that would be that. Raid over. No slaughter for today."

"I just needed an escape," Ilya admitted in a small voice. "Didn't really think anyone would come after me. Thought they'd know better and steer clear."

Cait took a few strides closer, arms still crossed casually. "Believe it or not, darlin', but yer not as scary as you seem to think you are."

Ilya had to chuckle at that. Then, suddenly, it didn't seem so funny. She ran her hands over her face, and stared as they came back not only dirty, but with crusted blood. She had forgotten Clay-Crawler's 'blood bond' warpaint. God, she had been cruel to him back in there...

"So, I've got one mother of a headache, and I'm thirsty as all fuck for a good stiff drink," Cait prattled in complaint as Ilya slowly slid down the wall to sit on the cold ground. "But it looks like water is the only thing on tap down here, so how about I go fetch us somethin' to eat and drink, and we try to work off that high of yers before those boys notice anythin', yeah?"

Ilya nodded absently, staring into the adjacent rock wall. She didn't care anymore. She just didn't care.

* * *

 _ **-Before you hate me and refuse to continue reading because I killed off Dogmeat, just know that there's a surprise a few chapters ahead involving him, so please don't be sad! I know I just partly spoiled it, but I don't want people to be sad or pissed, lol. [Still, even knowing what I had planned, I actually made myself cry writing this and thinking of my own dog :( ]**_

 _ **-I want to say a big atom-bomb-sized thanks to those who sent in such uplifting words on the last chapter. I'll admit I've been worried that people were losing interest after activity had dropped off, but I suppose I should have expected that to happen after making some of the chapters longer. You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear from you and that people are still into this. Thanks for being awesome :) If I was a psychotic raider obsessed with blood, I'd give you all a blood-bond :3**_

 ** _*Virtual blood-bonds*_**


	24. Rubble of the Forgotten

_**Foreword: Just want to give a trigger warning that this chapter has some suicide-thought elements. If anyone is disturbed by this or it is a trigger for you, feel free to skip this chapter. I'll write up a summary at the beginning of the following chapter so you don't miss anything.**_

* * *

 **Chapter 24: Rubble of the Forgotten**

* * *

Ilya was lost in her own world, staring at rock, riding the high, imagining that Dogmeat's spirit was sitting just at her side, watching nothing with her. He was watching over her, her very own guardian angel, a totem animal to send her signs and guide her down the right path.

The only path from here she could see was the one on her right, a tunnel filled with an encroaching dark that was welcoming and sinister all at once. It teemed with secrets and memories, things only for her to know, things that the dark deemed forbidden for anyone else to know. It was whispering to her, she could hear it in her head. There were so many, too many to grasp their words, but she got the sense of what they were saying, nonetheless.

The forgotten from the Old World, they felt her pain. Shared it, understood it. They offered her solace in their domain, a place to go and rest, to slip away quietly from her mortal despair. Crisp tongues on her synapses, all soothing and promising.

It would be so easy. _So_ easy.

But Dogmeat barked at her side. She turned to look at him. He was whining now, ears pinned back in anxiety, slinking toward her hand to lick it in pleading.

"Hey, it's okay, boy. I won't. It's okay."

"Talkin' to yerself?" Cait enquired, closing the door behind her. She held a bunch of food rations in her hands, and two bottles of water under her arm.

"Something like that," Ilya dodged, then sent Dogmeat a wink while Cait wasn't looking.

"Better watch that," Cait taunted on as she plopped herself down next to Ilya and handed her a box of Yum Yum Deviled Eggs, with a bottle of purified water to wash it down. "Talkin' to yerself is a major sign of loneliness. And I would know." She took a quenching gulp of water and then sighed loudly in satisfaction.

Ilya took a more tentative sip, swishing it and washing down any dust residue in her mouth. Mmm. Tasted rank.

"So," Cait started while tucking into her stale, irradiated eggs, "how long have you been hittin' the chems?" This time, her approach was devoid of judgement or hostility. She wasn't even looking at Ilya, just staring off as if the rock surrounds were a fascinating view. Everything about her manner was casual. Ilya knew it was a strategy, but she indulged her, anyway. Cait was a friend, and one that was only trying to help. She didn't deserve the cold-shoulder.

"I haven't exactly been keeping count of the weeks, but for a few now. Got curious in Diamond City. Finally picked it up in Goodneighbour."

"Hancock?" Cait guessed.

Ilya nodded and bowed into a fond smile. "Not that he straight-up pushed anything. He just let it slip that I looked on edge, and then suggested I try taking that edge off."

"Goddamn charming ghoul," Cait scoffed and gave a crooked smile, shaking her head.

"Wasn't his fault," Ilya vouched. "One offhand comment of his can't take the blame for getting me hooked. He didn't even know I was into chems until recently. It was all me. Just being dumb and weak. Needing an escape."

"I get that." Cait was nodding subtly, still staring ahead. "Was that when you went off with him straight after gettin' home from that Brotherhood airship?"

Ilya nodded.

"Knew it," she exclaimed in hushed self-satisfaction. "Knew you two were up to no-good. Should have followed me nose, but I had this stupid sense of respect for yer privacy. Stupid me."

Ilya gave her a sober look, not liking the way she had berated herself like that. "Cait, come on, don't even think about putting yourself down for me. I'm an adult, I made my own choices, and I can fix my own mistakes. This isn't on you or anyone else."

In return, Cait tore her up with a hard glare, pale skin soaking up the Pip-Boy light with a harsh luminance. "What do you think I am, a bloody hypocrite? You were there for me when I needed a friend, helped me kick the chems for good, and you never once judged me for it. Even when I told you about me good-for-nothin' parents, how I murdered the bastards in cold blood for what they did to me. You didn't so much as bat an eyelid, even said it sounded like justice. Now if that's not the sign of a true friend, I don't know what the hell is." Without warning, she reached out and snatched up Ilya's hand, almost crushing it in her grip. "So you can bet yer sweet cheeks that I'm gonna be here for you through yer hell. Whatever you need, I'll be there in a tick. If Deacon's bein' a brat, I'll smack him one good, if Danse's bein' a bossy britches, I'll give him a good boot up the arse, or if you just need a drinkin' buddy to drown away yer sorrows, I'll be there in a heartbeat." She grew a warped grin. "It might be swappin' out one bad habit for another, but at least it's a bad habit that everyone shares, so why the fuck not, am I right? We'll get through this together. You can count on that."

Stunned, Ilya's tongue flailed for words, and her eyes stung with moisture. She issued what she hoped was a thankful smile, then glanced down at their interlaced hands, and gave Cait's hand a squeeze in return.

They let the cold air fill with silence for a long while, just comforted by each other's company. Ilya was watching Dogmeat rest on his stomach, head on his paws, watching her in return. She was going to miss that adorable little fucker. Life in Sanctuary would never be the same. Hell, life in general would never be the same. She didn't want to think about the Jet wearing off. Maybe she should take a double hit, actually get hyped up and bounce off the walls. She was working up a resistance to it already.

But, no, she wouldn't. No more for today. For Cait.

* * *

Rejoining the group over an hour later, the two found most of them resting in a huddled line against a wall. Strong and MacCready were still out, Deacon was passed out, head resting on MacCready's leg, Hancock was sitting on a boulder, staring into a burning oil lantern that someone had managed to find, Clay-Crawler was watching Danse intently from a distance, who was off to one side, free of his armour. The paladin was kneeling before it, tinkering around the knee joint with a small torch, probably doing what he could to repair any damage it had sustained from the cave-in.

The three that were conscious turned at the sound of the two women's entrance. Both Hancock and Danse shot upright in a gentlemanly respect, but the raider remained on the ground, dipping his head in shame. On approach, Ilya considered apologizing to him, but then thought otherwise. It would be a lie; she still bristled with anger at the sight of him.

Cait broke the ice. "See? Told you I'd handle her," she gibed, specifically at Danse. "She's right as rain."

Danse absorbed that with silent resignation, then his eyes flashed to Ilya, and she could feel him gently considering her every facet. It was going to be a bitch of a job trying to keep things under wraps from him.

She cradled her elbows penitently. "I'm sorry you guys had to see that, back there. I let my emotions take over and get the better of me. It won't happen again."

"You kiddin' me?" Hancock asked in disbelief. "You just lost a friend, dog or not. He was a pal to everyone here, but especially you. No one's judging ya for being upset."

"Agreed," Danse put in. "Take all the time you need, soldier. Losing a team member is never an easy thing to deal with." By the way his voice mellowed out then, Ilya knew his mind had cut to his own experiences of loss, but he was swift to redirect the topic. "Hancock and I can take watch if you feel like taking a few hours rest. You look exhausted."

"That's a polite way of putting it," Hancock remarked under his breath. "As much as I wanna go tear these raider fucks a new one, I really gotta put my foot down and say you should grab some sleep. I'm scared you're gonna topple over just standing there."

Ilya didn't have much room to manoeuvre here. She glanced at Cait, who gave her an unhelpful smirk and shrug.

"Better do what they say, Ilya."

Her eyes darted involuntarily to Dogmeat's body, and the subsequent pang drained what strength endured in her limbs. With a docile nod, she agreed and wandered over to join the line of sleepers against the rock wall, as close to Dogmeat as she could. It was unhealthy to linger near a corpse, but she wasn't ready to let him go. Maybe a part of him was still in there somewhere.

She felt a presence settle in beside her, and wished hopelessly that it was Danse, but upon opening her eyes, she saw it was Cait. She was still thankful for the company and bodily warmth, and didn't protest when the woman patted at her own leg, telling Ilya to rest her head there for a pillow. They had never been so close before, it seemed their mutual struggle with chems had changed that.

Ilya exhaled slowly and let her eyes wane closed.

* * *

Sleep evaded her once again. She knew it would. The moment she had shut her eyes, that all too familiar fear of chasing the uncatchable had wrapped its tendrils around her mind and refused to let go. Insomnia had a charming way of doing that, of making her dread any attempt at sleep in knowing it would be a futile, frustrating skirmish in the dark recess of her mind.

In the maw of insomnia, one could never escape one's self.

To Ilya, there was nothing worse.

Thoughts of silently creeping off into that dark tunnel to join with the forgotten souls down here swirled to her in an equally dark cloud, over and over, seducing her mind, growing harder and harder to bat away. It would be so easy. She could chug Jet until it pervaded all her senses and let her slip off to a better place. She could take her knife and slit her lifelines, watching it all flow away calmly. She could end it all in a loud, dramatic statement, with a simple trigger pull of a pistol, or by releasing the pin of a grenade and pressing it to her dead heart. She could draw the ferals in and let them rip her apart in a last effort to feel alive, to strive for life again. Or she could go in alone, find those raiders and make a suicidal last stand, tearing up the quarry like an angel of death with her last breaths.

The latter appealed the most to her.

But no, as tempting, as comforting, as liberating as those thoughts were, she couldn't give up yet. She had a job to do, not only to avenge Dogmeat, but a responsibility to find those kidnapped ghouls and get them out. Buried beneath recent events and her own furious anguish, she had nearly forgotten the main reason she was down here.

A weapon for the people, her ass. She couldn't even remember the people for her own selfish battle-lust and suicide plans.

Sick of lying there idly, Ilya pried open her heavy eyelids and pushed up on aching hands. She didn't know how long she had been there, a few hours, maybe? Little sound had punctuated the dark during that time, and a sole figure sat by the dim light of the lantern not far away. To who it was, she couldn't perceive for the sleep-deprived mucus fogging over her eyes. Pushing away the sleep with blood-caked fingers, she glanced back at Cait. Asleep.

Shifting away as deftly as possible, Ilya made for the lantern, and Danse. Her approach drew his eye from his rifle maintenance, a slight turn of the head detailed by curious furrows above his brow before his features settled in ease. He had removed his tactical hood, but dust had still managed to collect through his hair, giving a matted grayscale to its mass.

"Sleep well?" he asked quietly, eyes glowing in the warm light.

"Somewhat," she lied, folding her limbs down across from him. "How long has it been?"

He went back to maintaining his laser rifle, wiping it free of dust and greasing up its intricate mechanisms. "A couple hours. Nothing we can't afford. Unless I'm mistaken, those raiders have nowhere to escape to, and attempting a pre-emptive strike would be foolish. They'd only end up funnelling through that narrow tunnel and handing us an easy victory."

"I'm still surprised they didn't rush us the moment the cave-in happened. They could've had us there and then."

"I wondered that, myself," Danse was nodding, still focused on his rifle. "But if what Hancock and the raider said were true, then there's enough ferals further ahead to discourage any assaults."

Ilya allowed a mild grin at his expense. "You really don't trust those two, huh."

"Trust is a commodity I don't give out lightly." He was stark serious, even lifting his eyes from his rifle to emphasis it. Ilya bit off her smile. It felt like a personal dig at her past behaviour, and she pulled her eyes away from his.

"I'm sorry," she heard him sigh out with instant remorse. "That was uncalled for, I didn't mean it in that way."

She brought her eyes back to his, seeing the sincerity in them, and offered him an understanding smile. "No, it's okay." _I deserved that._ But she didn't voice that thought, to keep herself from coming off as a whiner.

He looked uncertain, but went back to his rifle with a grim concentration, probably to bury himself in it to escape the discomfort. Ilya rested her chin in her knees and glanced off, though covertly watched him in his diligent work. It was times like these that she wished she could get inside his head and unravel his thoughts. Always so guarded. Always so introverted. Always so damned stoic. He frustrated the fuck out of her yet lured her in with the stalwart mystery he exuded. She was always a sucker for the strong silent types.

 _That's all it is. Just an attraction, because he's attractive and your_ _type. You're also lonely, depressed, a hot-blooded woman who hasn't had any in months and is sexually frustrated and as horny as a teenager at just the sight of him. That's all it is..._

Dogmeat was back, heeling next to Danse, watching contently as the man scrutinized his work. She loved seeing the two of them together like that. She could just watch them for hours.

"Harper?"

Danse was giving her a quizzical eye, concern riding on his brow. Dogmeat was gone. He must have found a scent somewhere and wandered off after it.

"Thinking of Dogmeat?" Danse asked now, as if he had unravelled _her_ thoughts, tone so gentle it ached. She blinked at him, and that's when she realised her eyes were swampy and dropping tears down her cheeks.

She mumbled something apologetic and dashed at the fluid with the backs of her hands, frowning as they came back dirty and with remnants of the blood bond warpaint yet again. It was probably smeared all over her face at this point.

Danse placed his rifle down and shook his head in protest, giving her his full attention. "It's alright. There's no need to apologize for grieving."

Ilya sucked in a fortifying breath and trained her features, staring into the lantern's flickering core. "I know," she whispered, "I'm just trying to keep it together while we're down here."

He was silent for a while, spectating the lantern with her. She dwelled on the simple comfort he gave just sitting there with her, whether he realised he was giving her comfort or not. She stole a glimpse at him and decided he didn't. By his face, he was lost in himself and didn't know what to do from here.

She had tried to ban herself from doing this around him, becoming a burden and a challenge for him to deal with. It wasn't fair on him, wasn't fair on _anyone._ They shouldn't have to deal with picking up the pieces she crumbled into. It was embarrassing, and worse, made guilt stack up a tally. God, she just wanted to go about her self destruction and not have to worry about hurting people. She almost wished they didn't care.

"Will you let me patch up those fingers now?"

Ilya took a moment to register Danse's careful question. Her fingers. Nails broken and bleeding from clawing at the rocks and stubbing them repeatedly. She was lucky she hadn't broken a finger at some point. She regarded them in the light, still trembling, the dusty fingerless gloves covering up the dressings beneath from her other rampage against the cabin that night.

She gave permission with a nod and an embarrassed smile, and watched in place as Danse smiled back and roused himself to make for his armour standing prone behind him. He had plonked all his possessions near its feet, and retrieved a small pack he always brought with him, carrying it back over to her. He settled beside her and picked through the pack's contents, bringing out a Stimpak.

"You sure you wanna waste that on some bleeding fingernails?" Ilya queried before he could even get near her with it. Usually, Danse was super strict with supplies, rationing everything out in painful detail and only relinquishing what was necessary, when was necessary.

His answering tone was uncharacteristically casual as he flashed her a guilty, yet sportive smile. "Well, we can't have our crackshot-knight unable to wield a gun to her full potential, now, can we?"

Ilya grew a slow, equally sportive smile, and then gave in with a snicker, pulling off her gloves and giving up her palms to him, where the flesh was soft and plentiful enough for the needle to sink into. She noted how he had avoided calling her _his_ crackshot-knight, like he once had. He wasn't her mentor anymore, she reminded herself sadly.

"What is it with you and injuring your hands?" Danse attempted humour after withdrawing the needle, and it did make her snort at her own expense, banishing the seed of sadness. In reality, there was nothing humorous about the self-inflicted wounds; she found it funny because one: she found almost anything funny, and two: any attempts at humour Danse made were hilarious, in her eyes. Maybe because it was always out of the blue and so unexpected.

He smiled again as her own stretched to her cheeks, a small fond curving of his lips that reached right into his dark, liquid, firelit eyes. She was caught in there for a moment, basking in the warm glow they reflected and the depth beneath it, in the way his entire battle-hardened face softened and lit up when he smiled. She found herself taken back to the midst of the cave-in in that brief moment between them, and wondered at it, wondered at _him_.

Had it really happened? Or was she truly losing her mind...

She watched absently as Danse saturated a wad of cloth with vodka and dabbed away the grime from her blood-clotted fingertips. She smothered in a hiss at the sting, and then eyed the bottle of vodka with sudden thirst. As soon as he was done with one hand, she reached for the bottle's neck and downed a hard gulp, releasing that hiss as it burned a path down her throat.

Danse raised a brow up from his work. "There goes my sterile antiseptic..."

"Sorry," Ilya said guiltily, "it was just right there."

"It's alright," he allowed, not really seeming surprised at all by her urge. "Just don't overdo it. We have a lot of work ahead of us."

She nodded, brought the bottle to her lips again, but only for a sip, then offered it to him. He considered the bottle, flicked a glance at her, then accepted her gesture and took a decent swig. He didn't even flinch at the burn, and she discreetly narrowed curious eyes at him. Apparently he was seasoned, which took her by surprise. Sure, she had shared a victory beer with him here and there over their time, but they had never delved into the hard liquor together. She made a mental note to explore his capabilities one day.

Thinking of recreational substances reminded her of Hancock. "Where's Hancock, by the way? Wasn't he meant to be up on watch with you? Don't tell me he suddenly turned feral out of nowhere and you just _had_ to shoot him..."

He angled her a mock look from beneath his brow. "No," was his initial response of defence. "Hancock is fine. He's further down the passage through that doorway, with the raider... we decided it was in our best interest to separate."

"Ah." She understood, doing her best to keep the knowing grin within. Then it faded of its own accord as her thoughts travelled on new routes. "I should go apologise to Clay..."

"Why?" came Danse's sharp retort, partnered with a sharp frown. "Your words were fair and true. He deserved every single bit of your wrath. In fact, I think he got off lightly. If I'd had my way with him, he would be handcuffed to that machine over there."

She wouldn't expect anything less. Ilya darted a glance over at the pre-war machine on reflex, unearthed from the rubble by their hard labour. There was a terminal connected to it, drawing her interest. But she focused back on Danse as he cleansed a particularly sensitive nail that had been bent right back and splintered through the centre.

"Sorry," he apologised, noticing her flinch slightly.

"I'm glad I'm high on Med-X right now," she jested without thinking, drawing a suspect eye from Danse.

"Exactly how much did the scribes provide you with?"

 _Shit._ "Enough," she evaded. _Plus the dose I took beforehand, and then there's all the Jet..._

He said nothing, and continued. It worried her.

She sifted through the murk in her brain for something to divert the topic with. "That Knight, the one that got infected by the specimen out in the Rad Lands... Palmer? Prescott? Patel?"

"Knight Pascal," Danse supplied.

"That's the one," she nodded, feeling like an ass. "How's he doing? I've been meaning to ask." _No I haven't._

"He was doing well, last I was aboard the Prydwen. He's being kept in quarantine, in case of sudden mutation. They kept him monitored for a longer period of time before surgically removing the specimen compared with the raider—to see whether or not it would fall off on its own."

"So it didn't," Ilya muttered thoughtfully. "Do they know why?"

"I didn't have time to receive a full report before deploying to the quarry," Danse admitted, "but I do know that both specimens removed from Knight Pascal and the raider died within an hour. Perhaps they require another host to continue living. It explains why my recon team observed raiders in the Rad Lands operating with specimens attached to their heads as if it were normal."

Ilya chewed her lip and pondered for a length of time. "Maybe the mutations keep developing the longer the specimen is attached. I've been wondering why Clay doesn't seem to match the reports on other raider's mutations."

"It's possible," he agreed. "But reports also stated that raiders were observed to awaken with instant results, displaying their new abilities to each other. This was after only a short amount of time in an unconscious state."

Making a noise of disappointment, Ilya slumped. "Okay, so that blows _that_ theory..."

"It could simply be that Clay-Crawler was naturally more resistant to the mutation," Danse suggested, still focusing intently on cleansing her fingers, being very gentle, as if her hands were fragile ornaments. "Whatever the reason, I'm sure we'll know more once we get him back aboard the Prydwen and under observation again."

"A patient, not a prisoner, right?" she sought confirmation.

"Right," he confirmed, voice steady. Still, a shadow of doubt filled the back of her mind, especially after Clay-Crawler's role in Dogmeat's death... she was still surprised how much it seemed to have affected Danse. She wasn't aware how fond he had grown of the canine.

At the thought, Dogmeat was back again, her loyal totem spirit, watching the two of them with his intelligent eyes. She wondered if he had found the source of the scent he had picked up before. Maybe it had been from the raider she had seen in the dark before the cave-in. She might be able to get Dogmeat to track him. Yes. That's what she would do. It would be ironic, to track down Dogmeat's killer with Dogmeat himself...

"Thank you," she gave Danse quietly as he finished tending to her hands. He couldn't wrap her fingers in cloth and preserve their flexibility, so they would have to remain bare and let the Stimpak do its thing at fast-tracking the tissue repair.

"Not a problem," he accepted casually.

"No, I mean for letting me keep going down here, even after the shit hit the fan, and I lost my head just before."

"Well, we've come this far." He gave a minute shrug, attempting to keep things casual in his usual defence mechanism for these kinds of heartfelt moments. She knew him better than he thought. "Between the pair of us, and anyone else fit to continue on, I'm confident we can handle the situation. After all, you and I have tackled numerous amounts of raiders on our own with next to no trouble. As long as the raider is out of the way, we shouldn't have anymore problems."

Ilya watched him as he gathered his field kit and headed back to his armour, strapping the small pack back to the armour's hip. She didn't have a smooth way to say what came next, so she cursed herself and just blurted it.

"I still want Clay with us going ahead."

His head snapped to the side as if poised to catch a brief sound, then he turned, an unnerved scowl dominating his features. "Even after what he's done?" She nodded meekly. "I fail to understand why. He's done nothing but jeopardize this operation from the start, and will only continue to compromise us. He's like a blundering child."

She sighed and stood, bracing herself for a debate. "So he's an idiot, but he can learn. I still think having him with us will be a huge advantage going up against the Dark Bloods. He just needs a kick up the ass, and some training... maybe from someone who knows how to whip people into shape and turn them into soldiers..."

It dawned on him eventually, and his brows rose in that familiar way of shock. "Hold up. You want _me_ to train him? You've got to be joking..."

"Why not? It'd give you something to do with your spare time." His incredulous dismissal only made her chase the idea more proactively, folding her arms in an attempt to convey innocence as she casually meandered around the lantern, edging her way toward him. He watched her suspiciously, as if he expected her to lash out with a blade. "You're always complaining about having nothing to do while we catch some downtime in Sanctuary."

"You forget that I'm no longer your mentor," he warned her off, folding his arms to mimic her, stubbornly. "I won't be required to stay in Sanctuary any longer."

That stung. She came to a standstill before him, trying to uphold a bulletproof mask, that the reality of his words hadn't shot through and rattled her core. Contemplating hard features that mirrored her mask, she witnessed a chink in his armour. He had regretted his words.

She scavenged some comfort from seeing that, but it didn't soften the blow of the truth. Accepting defeat, Ilya unfolded her arms and sighed aloud. "Fine." She backed off and wandered aimlessly over to the lantern again. "I'll train him up myself. But don't come crying to me if he ends up blowing himself up with a Fat-man," she played it off lightly.

"Oh, don't worry, I won't."

 _Asshole._ She just shook her head and squatted back down over the lantern.

Luckily for them and the ensuing awkward silence, Hancock and Clay-Crawler reappeared from the mine passage.

"Good to see you up and about," Hancock greeted warmly.

Ilya acknowledged him with a fleeting smile, then laid her eyes on the raider and stayed them. He met her gaze, then broke it shyly and lowered his head, shuffling after Hancock like a lost puppy.

"Clay," she spoke up, standing to stop him in his tracks. He came to an abrupt halt and looked up at her in surprise, small round eyes anxious in their hollow sockets. "I'm sorry," she said earnestly, and she really meant it. The wound of losing Dogmeat was still raw, pulling at her internal strings with a constant threat of tears, and it still pained her just to look at Clay-Crawler... but she understood, and knew he had only been trying to do his best, and never meant to hurt anyone here. She didn't know if she could ever fully forgive him on a deep personal level, but for the mission, she could put aside the blame.

Maybe that was just how Danse felt toward her...

Clay-Crawler took a moment to soak that up, then he began nodding rapidly, apologetically, before dropping to his knees and grovelling at her feet, like she were some displeased goddess that he must appease. She was stunned, embarrassed, appalled.

"Thank you! Thank you, Whisper! So sorry for making hurt. So sorry for Dogmeat. Never mean to kill, never want to hurt. So very sorry! Will repay, will make it right! Avenge Dogmeat! Thank you!"

"Stop, just stop," she told him firmly, reaching for his shoulder to pull him back to his feet. He looked confused, expectant, shivering with anxiety. "Look, from now on, you stay close, no losing your shit like that again. I know you want some revenge down here, but you gotta take it easy. We work as a team, or more people will get killed."

"Yes. Teamwork. Not run ahead. So sorry!" The young raider was distraught but determined.

Ilya nodded, but couldn't bring herself to muster a forgiving smile. "I need you to do whatever Danse and I say, without hesitation. Can you do that for me?"

He nodded vigorously, eyes wide to convince. "Yes. Obey The Dancer and Whisper. Teamwork!" A dirty thumb sprang up to show his enthusiasm. Probably picked that up from Deacon.

"Good," she uttered, satisfied. She turned and just wandered off, trying to gather herself. "Good..." Her eyes were magnetically drawn to the mass beneath MacCready's spread duster, and she stood mournfully, gazing at it, nodding to herself, trying to piece her mind back together. "Good..."

There was utter silence behind her. Not even the crunching of gravel beneath boots. It was peaceful to her, a little pocket of silent paradise where her frazzled mind could swim. Just swim. Swim.

She thought she heard Dogmeat bark from a distance, the sound ricocheting off the rocky chasm, but when she scanned around for the canine, there wasn't a sign. She sighed, taking in the environment at her leisure, and spotted the terminal again, approaching it to key in the activation.

There were three entries, the first two of a raider jotting down their frustrations with the other raiders working under them to produce scrap for their network around the Commonwealth. Apparently the workers were afraid of venturing deeper into the mine, whispering to each other about what was down there. Ilya lifted her gaze and peered over at the door to the passage, shrugged, then buried her nose back into the texts on the screen.

The third entry really made her skin crawl. It said:

 **I'm safe in the light. I'm safe in the light. I'm safe in the light.**

Over and over in a non-stop mantra of mania. The repetitive phrase filled up the screen, breaking only for several paragraphs. The very notion that the raider took the care to paragraph this seemed to make it that much more maniacal. Ilya's blood ran cold as she powered down the terminal and let her fingers slide away from the keyboard. Taking another long look down the passage, she could almost feel it watching her in return.

Hancock cleared his throat, shattering the silence and nearly causing Ilya to shed her skin. "So..." he drawled, giving voice to the awkwardness. "We gonna get this freakshow back on the road?"

"Harper?" Danse checked.

She spun, blinked and surveyed them, then nodded. "Yeah. Let's move out." She made a move for her weapons, which had been set down against the wall where she had slept, or _tried_ to sleep. "I don't think Cait, MacCready, or Strong will be fit enough to head out with us, though."

"Agreed," Danse said as he popped open his power armour, standing back as its plating yawned outward. "But they could still prove useful in the unlikely event that we have to pull back for fire support. This area would serve as an excellent fallback point."

Ilya went about holstering her weapons one by one, but kept her 10mm live for close quarters. "Sounds good. Hancock, can you get Deacon up?" The Ghoul approached the snoozing man and issued a light kick, jolting Deacon out of his dreams.

"Gah! Aw, c'mon, I was having a good one..."

"Yeah? Nothing too filthy, I hope."

While the two swapped banter, Ilya shook Cait awake and spoke softly as not to jar her. "Hey. We're heading out. See if you can wake these two and fill them in on everything."

"Aye. Will do." Cait pinched at her tear ducts and combed a hand through her scruffy red tresses. "You just be careful, now, ya hear? But you be sure to make those bastards pay."

Ilya pulsed her jaw in determination and gave Cait a hard nod. "I will. And thank you, for covering my ass."

"Anytime."

With Danse on point, Ilya fell into step behind him, sending a glance back over her shoulder at Clay-Crawler, Deacon, and Hancock on their six. She exhaled to quell her jitters and endure her pounding headache, and clutched her handgun with intent, fingers wrapping around its grip with renewed purpose.

She kept an eye out for Dogmeat, promising to avenge him.

* * *

- _ **So this is where Ilya officially starts losing her shit...**_

 _ **-Sorry for making some of you guys cry at the last chapter :( Despite it, it really means a lot to hear that some of you get so drawn into this and that it affects you like that. It's something every writer strives to give their readers, and I'm just so glad that I can do that for you guys and make you feel the experiences that I feel when writing them. (Hopefully less of the sad ones and more good ones for the future) Makes me feel less alone in this writing journey, so thank you for getting so involved :)**_

 _ **-I've avoided giving shoutouts and addressing specific readers in these sections just to save people from being embarrassed at the mentions or my being accused of favoritism or anything, but I feel bad about not being able to respond to those who review with guest accounts, so I figured it can't really hurt and that I can at least respond to those that I feel need responses, or if answering someone's question could benefit everyone. So here goes.**_

 _ **LadyNightShade - Your comment on the last chapter actually made me laugh, even though it made you cry lol. Sorry :3 Maybe from now on I should put in a forewarning if there are any potential sad parts...**_

 _ **Heaven in a Rage - You've been such a trooper with your reviews, I'm really grateful! Please don't feel pressured to review, though. It was just that a lot of activity all around dropped off suddenly and I had a moment of panic wondering what I'd done wrong, lol. Maybe it was the longer chapters, or the school break, or the story dipping in pace with Ilya and Danse having their falling out, I'm not sure. I'm the kind of person that wants to please everyone, which is kinda a bad thing, haha. Anyway, thank you for your constant awesomeness, but please don't feel pressured. (Though if you want to review every chapter then please feel free, no complaints here :P )**_


	25. Think Fast, Shoot Faster

_**Disclaimer:** Graphic violence (I mean it's Fallout after all...)_

* * *

 **Chapter 25: Think Fast, Shoot Faster**

* * *

 _ **Previous chapter summary:**_ _Ilya played with the idea of suicide, thinking up different methods until a hallucinated Dogmeat interrupted her thoughts. Delirium then began its onset, with an illusion of Dogmeat following her reality. Her and Cait had a heart-to-heart, and Ilya confided her chem addiction. Cait vowed to help her through it however she could, bringing the two women closer together than ever._

 _Struggling with insomnia, Ilya couldn't sleep and her thoughts went to suicide planning. Instead, she got up to sit with Danse on watch. The two tentatively started up some small-talk, Danse finally won his battle to patch up her wounded fingers, and Ilya revealed that she still wanted Clay-Crawler with them throughout the mission, proposing that Danse train him for the future. Unimpressed by this, Danse refused to train the raider, but allowed him to continue on with the mission._

 _Ilya eventually apologized to Clay-Crawler for her harsh words, but was not yet ready to forgive him for Dogmeat's death. Injured, Strong, MacCready, and Cait stayed behind while the others moved on through the mines._

* * *

Down here, the air carried an ancient, musty odour. Of dust and bones, Ilya thought darkly. The echoes seemed more hollow, more haunting, the feeling of a presence creeping up along her skin to snatch her in the dark. Those darting shadows and morphing shapes harassed the edges of her vision again, but she was learning to ignore them, only focusing on any motions across the ground for Dogmeat.

Danse balled a fist and they came to a halt. He shot a series of precise looks to Deacon and Hancock, motioning with two fingers for them to move up and form a perimeter. Ilya moved up on his flank with handgun at the ready, trying to ease her trembling aim so he wouldn't notice. She realised he was too focused on that circuit breaker right ahead, anyway.

Taking the lever in hand, he slammed it up, and the overhead lightbulbs came to life all along the passageway in illuminating succession. Clay-Crawler jerked and lifted his nailed baseball bat in combat readiness. Their immediate area was clear, but littered with feral ghoul corpses and fresh blood, pooled beneath their feet and flecked across the walls.

"Clay and I cleared a nice bloody path through here," Hancock spoke in hushed tones. "But don't count on the whole passage being cleared ahead. We speed-ran most of the way. Some ferals might still be lurking."

"At least now we'll have a better chance of seeing them," Danse responded. "I've fought in several harsh environments, but darkness has always been one of the toughest."

"Not if you know how to use it to your advantage," Deacon snuck in suggestively.

Danse made no response for that.

They moved on, passing a pre-war forklift machine, a withered skeleton still in the driver's seat, mining hat proudly perched atop the skull, coated in a thick layer of dust. Ilya approached it with forlorn reluctance, though feeling somehow drawn to it. Tattered clothes still hung on its hollow form, and she briefly wondered who the man had once been, if he had a family, a wife and kids, and then what his last thoughts were before radioactive fallout cooked him in his place. Her mangled fingers swept through the dust on the forklift's steering wheel, as if touching the place where the man's fingers had once touched would disclose some details of his life.

It hit her like blunt force trauma, a flash in her skull that washed over her eyes in pallid detail. She was standing amidst the mundane labour of mining, the forklift active, its engine rumbling with life. In the seat was the man, restored in flesh, filling out the clothing which was in pristine condition save for dust and sweat. She gasped, wide-eyed, as she took a step back in an attempt to absorb her surroundings. This was all before the Great War, in _her_ time, conditioned light flooding the passage to divulge details now lost to time and decay. She could even smell that the air was fresher, lighter, only sullied by the stench of cigarette smoke and stale sweat. There were other men around her, loitering, plump from a lifestyle of leisure and overindulgence. It was surreal and overwhelming and familiar.

In a snap, she was back in the dark, staring at the skeleton, at the century's worth of dust on her fingertips as they tremored with the rock encasing her down here. Dogmeat was sitting near her feet, staring at her.

"Somethin' ain't right about this place," Hancock muttered in the edge of her consciousness.

She shot around to gauge everyone. "Did nobody else see that just now?"

They all turned on her in confusion.

"Uhh, see what?" Deacon inquired with an underlying anxiety, peering around with it.

"There were people here. I just saw them." Nobody spoke for an uncomfortable moment.

"Dark Bloods?" Clay-Crawler asked hopefully.

Ilya frowned in frustration and shook her head. "No. Men, from before the war. They were just here..."

Again, silence. They were all looking at her as if she was crazy.

Suddenly, a relieved chuckle spilled over Deacon's nerves. "Ah, good one, Ilya. But come on. This is not the time to tell ghost stories."

She gaped at him, but decided against pressing the truth of her experience. They obviously hadn't seen what she had seen. But just what the hell _was_ that? She wasn't crazy, it had been real, as vivid as reality right now, as if she really had been back before the war. She wasn't crazy. She wasn't _fucking_ crazy.

Pulling up her distracted gaze from the ground, Danse was watching her intently, taut lines of unease on his face. He thought she was crazy. Was she crazy? God. _Was_ she?

They were about to keep moving, when the sound of limbs dragging along the ground slithered out from the dark. Weapons were primed, and not a moment later, gangly humanoids pulled themselves from crevices to surround them, wild menace gurgling deep in their throats.

"Ferals!" Danse ground out. "Exterminate them!" His weapon was the first to buck to life, lasering down a feral into glowing ash. Ilya took shaky aim with her 10mm and snapped off a series of rounds into her chosen target as it ambled toward her, playing it safe by going for centre mass. The rotten creature howled and staggered back as blood spewed from its chest, but it was back on its advance a moment later, face melted and distorted in mindless aim. She stared it right in the soulless eye and tugged on the trigger without remorse, readying to finish it off with a blow from her pistol stock once it got in range, but Clay-Crawler got in first.

He rushed at the decrepit thing with baseball bat at the ready, shrieking his inane battlecry before connecting his swing with its head. The nails in the bat punctured through the feral's head with a wet smack, knocking it to the ground under a limp bundle of flesh. The raider withdrew the bat and raised it high above his head, releasing another yell as he brought it down again on the feral's skull, reducing it to a bloody pulp. Cranial mucus and strings of skin hung from the nails.

Ilya rounded and scanned, seeing Hancock blast a feral at point-blank with his shotgun and kick away the corpse, and Deacon producing a clean headshot from behind him with his silenced pistol. Danse was mowing down everything else in sight with a cold, controlled hatred, deep-set brow highlighted with every red flare from his rifle's release. Ilya picked her next target and let loose a salvo of bullets into its spindly legs as it headed for Clay-Crawler, but it continued to shuffle forward in determination, unaffected by the rounds ripping into its legs.

Clay-Crawler was already in a wrestle with another feral, blocking its rabid attack with his bat as it swung an arm for him. He beat at its chest repetitively, revelling in the bloody destruction he wrought with high pitched laughter, oblivious to the second incoming feral.

"Clay, behind you!" Ilya alerted, but didn't count on him to defend himself alone. She rushed in closer as the feral seized the raider in its wiry grasp and lurched in to bite at his neck. Caught from behind, he was unable to fend it off. Not trusting her aim to shoot it, Ilya struck out with the stock of her pistol, right to the temple. The feral's grip slackened and it fell free of Clay-Crawler, seeming to gargle its own saliva in pain as it teetered over, giving Ilya the chance to kick its feet out from under it and finish it with a bullet.

"Saved me!" Clay-Crawler praised with wide eyes, panting. "Thanks!"

"Watch your ass next time," she snapped, and turned back to check on the rest of the team, who were finishing off the last dregs of the ambush.

Deacon blew out relieved air and let up his alertness, lowering his pistol. "We made that look easy," he commented, almost in surprise. His shades centred on Ilya as she stepped toward him, surveying the tangle of bloody limbs at their feet. "Bet you crapped your pants the first time you saw a feral. I know I did."

She briefly remembered her first encounter, overcome with horrid shock and swallowing a rise of bile at the time. "Other end," she told him. "Had just eaten a mole-rat on a stick..."

"Ah. Still a noob, eh? Big mistake. Wasteland 101: Never eat _that._ "

Danse cut off their chatter without warning, curb stomping a downed-but-alive feral with mighty force, the mass of flesh beneath his metal boot giving a loud crunch of bones and a squelch as blood spouted out from beneath it. His jaw was set firm, features slightly scrunched up in repugnance. Ilya hadn't forgotten how much he hated anything that was mutated and wasn't human.

"That"—Deacon paused mid-sentence to gag—"I did not need to see that."

"The only thing ferals are good for is scraping the mud off my boots," Danse growled, giving no regard to the blood that now decorated his step. He garnered some stares for that, but it didn't seem to faze him, either.

Hancock gave a thoughtful hum as he crouched next to a corpse. "Ferals sure make it easy to forget they were ever people." He fished out a pack of cigarettes from its pocket and nodded in surprised satisfaction. "Wonder how close I came to goin' feral? Or maybe I did?" he added with a quirk to his tone, and Ilya suspected that had just been to rile up Danse. The man only gave the Ghoul a dark glare before trudging ahead.

"Let's keep moving."

They pushed through another ambush, passing Clay-Crawler's broken armour sprawled across the cement, vowing to drag it back with them on their way out, and eventually came to a fork in the passageway. Danse and Hancock split ahead down each passage a short distance to scout them out, while the other three stayed behind in waiting.

"You hanging in there?" Deacon approached Ilya softly as she leaned her back against the stone wall. Clay-Crawler squatted on the ground near them, listening to their surroundings for any distant movements.

"Yeah," Ilya sighed out, reminding herself not to nod to save herself the assault of her headache. "Headache's gonna kill me, though."

He nibbled a lip and folded his arms loosely, pistol silencer protruding out from under an elbow. "Be honest with me, how high are you on a scale of ten?" His voice was level, betraying no hint of his usual wit.

She conserved a long stretch of time just to fully absorb the nature of his approach. This was weighing on him, more than she had realised. She exhaled tiredly, casting a glance out at the passages to stall, hoping to see Danse or Hancock heading back this way, then she peered down at the blood on her boots. "It's the only thing keeping me going right now, Deacon..."

He nodded at her words, not with acceptance, but with resentful expectation. It made regret and self-disgust well up in her gut. Even Deacon was getting sick of her.

"Look, I'm trying to be understanding, here," Deacon expressed with a longing gaze at the ceiling above them, "but you're not making it easy. I know things are rough for you and all, but you can't just turn to chems to deal with it all. And _on the job_. Jeez, Ili. I mean, you're putting us all at risk being as high as a vertibird when the bullets are flying. I'm over here scared outta my mind waiting to catch some friendly-fire in case I happen to look like a feral on first glance."

"Keep your voice down," she hissed at him.

He clicked his tongue at her, but made an effort to calm himself. "I'm just... I'm worried."

"You're angry."

"I'm pissed at you, yeah," he admitted, owning the fact with a tight shrug. "But I'm more worried."

"Don't be," she told him, now looking him in the shades with bold intent. He would never stop this unless she put her foot down and convinced him she was fine. "Okay? Today is fucked, so give me a break, but I'll do better from tomorrow."

"Come on. Last time you said you'd stop, you lied. And trust me when I say I know how to spot a liar."

She sharpened her gaze. "This time I won't."

But Deacon growled on a frustrated sigh, hand picking at something on his forehead. "I'm not stupid. I know what you're—"

He didn't get to finish his words as Danse's loud footsteps breached the dark. "This way, we've got activity just up ahead. Sounds like a melee."

Ilya pushed off the wall in relief at his return and moved after him, shooting Deacon a warning glare on her way. He looked exasperated, but fell back into her secrecy without a word. She wondered how long he would keep that up for before going over her head with all this.

They didn't have to wait long for Hancock to show up, reporting a long passage down his way and that it was probably the way out. He mentioned that more ferals were ahead, too, but since he was a Ghoul, they let him move past them without hostility.

Following Danse, sounds of battle boomeranged off the mine walls, shouts of exertion blended with wet slashes through flesh and dull impacts with blunt force. The snarls of ferals overlaid it all, and they sounded dozens strong.

Danse brought them to a halt at a small metal platform separating the passage from an open area, flood lights beaming out at them. "There's no audible gunfire. Either they're conserving their ammunition, or they have no firearms. Which puts us at an advantage. I suggest we focus fire on the ferals, keeping them from rushing us. The raiders, we can push back into cover with suppressive fire."

Hancock was nodding, posture taut, ready for a brawl. "Whatever you say, tin-can."

"If you wanna run ahead and whittle them down for us, be my guest, Ghoul. Don't just wait for my approval."

"Stop it," Ilya scolded them both, and they both took it grudgingly. She transferred the focus of her eyes to Danse, all business. "What if they're Dark Bloods? If there's enough of them, they'll rush us just like the ferals."

He didn't falter in his resolve. "We have superior firepower. They won't stand a chance." She nodded to his confident gaze, swapping out her handgun for laser rifle. Her focus was too frayed to wield her hunting rifle accurately. She then reached back and tapped Clay-Crawler's shoulder to get his attention, telling him to switch his 'war club' for his shotgun. He did so without hesitation.

Deacon made the swap for his hunting rifle. "Anyone got some holy water? I always wanted to try that on them." He received an unimpressed glare from Danse and shrugged. "I'll take that as a no."

As one, they stormed out into the spacious cavern, raining laser and lead upon the gangrenous wave of feral ghouls. Multiple went down within seconds, even before the team could pick out their cover and dash for it. Raiders beyond the crowd of ferals broke from their open melee to scatter behind their makeshift barricades of cement blocks and sandbags. The ferals split their focus, half continuing their assault on the raiders, the other half turning to pursue the new threat from behind them.

Ilya made a dash for a wooden decking off to the right of the entrance, slipping down into low cover behind a boarded wall. Despite her muddled awareness, the Jet kept her sharp enough to review the area with a swift scan. Rusted metal cages lined the outer walls, stacked several layers high, each containing a small mob of threshing specimens. Bloodied and mutilated corpses hung from chains on wooden poles in typical raider decoration, accented by bones and skulls of various origins, just to spice things up a little and add a morbid touch. Laid out on racks bolted to walls were thick slabs of meat, skin toasted by fire and charred around the edges. Fresh limbs, most human, were piled haphazardly in a garbage bin. Blood leaked from the bottom of it, rivulets collecting in the craggy ground. The stink of iron and death was rich in her nostrils.

Off to one side of the cavern was an incline of cement, a pre-war bulldozer perched at the height. What caught her eye was another cage, larger than the ones housing the specimens, and exactly like the one over the firepit outside the quarry. The Ghoul farmers were inside it, bent to their knees, pressed up against the bars watching on with faces of terror. Thank god they were alive.

Incoming ferals drew her attention, and her laser fire. She vaporized them in their flailing charge, Hancock and Clay-Crawler on her flanks doing their part, both of them pumping shells out with their shotguns to keep the ferals at bay. Deacon had stayed back near the opening for ranged support, while Danse took the rock wall parallel to the trio on the decking.

All was going well, ferals being ripped to shreds on either side, until someone gave a crazed warcry.

"For the blood children! For the Blood Lands!"

Ilya strained to see through the cacophony of gore, only catching something emerging from cover behind the feral swarm.

Danse saw it. "Raider suicider! Take him down!"

"Fuck." She trained in on the movement, waiting for a gap in the thrashing of bodies to shoot the raider down, but she soon realised there wouldn't be a gap for a clean shot. The raider was using a dead feral as a meat shield, the grenade hidden somewhere behind it.

She opened fire in wild abandon, her shots only charring at the feral carcass. He was getting closer, headed right for her, Hancock, and Clay-Crawler, yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs, the young raider beside her yelling back at him to deny his coming glory.

"Take him down! Take him down!" Danse was thundering, his own shots going for the raider's legs but either hitting the feral's or just failing to impede him.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck._ Ilya bared her teeth and emptied her fusion cells into the suicider, praying to whatever gods were above that one of her lasers would ignite a chain reaction and disintegrate him, but it was no use. He was running on pure adrenaline and unstoppable.

And then she saw it, a peek from beneath the feral's torso. It wasn't a grenade, it was a mini-nuke!

 _Holy fuck!_

Danse must have seen it too, or already knew what it was, because he did the unthinkable and charged out from his cover, right for the suicider, a roar building to rise from his lungs.

Ilya's heart was in her throat. "DANSE!"

He collided in full power-armour-force with the raider, shoulder-barging him from his intended trajectory. Ilya cried out hopelessly, but instead of an apocalyptic explosion, the raider was flung airborne without even the chance of detonating his payload. He sailed, screaming his rage, across the cavern and was swatted against the far wall. That was when the mini-nuke detonated from the impact, tearing out in both light and fire to shake the earth deep in its crust.

Ilya took shelter behind the boarded wall and grimaced into it as a hot gust blew overhead. Barely waiting for the fallout to subside, she then leapt over her cover and raced through the smoke, dust, and falling debris from above, blind but resolute. Feral corpses were scattered, some completely limbless, others scorched black. She found Danse down on a knee, facing away from the blast, eyes closed with a pained grimace fixed on his face, as if he was enduring the world's worst migraine. She swore her relief at the sight of him and slung her rifle over her shoulder, rushing down to him.

"You fucking madman," she chided angrily before her hands were gently cupping his face, feeling the prick of his stubble on her palms, overcome with her emotion and worry for him. He opened his eyes to her, bleary, pain riddling them. "Why did you do that?" she murmured in sympathy.

"Only option," he winced out, still firm, still stoic.

There wasn't time to contemplate his actions any further, they needed to fall back. "Can you move?" Ilya asked him, releasing his face and grasping at his arm. "Come on, we need to move it."

His glazed eyes seemed to clarify again, and he gave her a slight nod, grunting as he pushed up to his feet. Ilya kept a firm hold of his arm as she hastily led him back into cover by the wooden decking, whether he still needed her guidance or not. She dragged him down against the wall, where he dropped down with her dazedly and just sat with his back against it, wincing again at how heavily he had let himself drop.

"Whew," Hancock slumped against the wooden boards across from them. "Could use some Jet after that."

"Shit yeah," Ilya agreed on reflex, though not taking her eyes off Danse, still clutching onto his arm possessively. He was so out of it, he didn't even seem to notice.

Deacon sped in under the cover of smoke and falling rock to join them, taking up a sentry beside Clay-Crawler. "You think that got 'em all?"

Ilya made no response to that, too focused on Danse. "Are you okay?" she fretted.

He shook his head at her, then indicated to his nearest ear. "Barely hear you. Burst eardrums." The raised volume of his voice reinforced that fact.

She nodded her understanding and immediately reached for a Stimpak, pricking it into his neck before he had time to see what it even was. He quietly thanked her and then laid his head back against the wall, and she flopped back beside him, pressing her forehead into his armour's shoulder-guard, catching a breath she hadn't realised she'd lost. That had been too close. She was going to tear him to shreds later for being such an idiot, even if he had just saved all of their lives.

Fuck. She could have _lost_ him just then. Just like that. Her grip on his metal arm tightened as she leaned into it.

As the cavern stabilized and the smoke cleared, a voice echoed out at them.

"Good fight! Impressed. Good fighters." There was a pause, and Ilya slipped out from beside Danse and peered around the rock. A sole man was walking out from a dark tunnel at the end of the cavern, holding out something in his hand for them to see. It looked like a detonator. Her mind raced. Was it for the Ghoul prisoners? Were they wearing explosive slave collars? She quickly glanced at their cage on the opposite wall, but couldn't pick out enough detail to tell.

"I am named Doom-Guy!" the raider announced loudly, proudly. "This place, my quarry! I own! I run! I drain blood of the sacrificed to join with the sacred oil! You! You have killed and destroyed in my quarry! Angered me! But!" He seemed to pause again for effect. "Impressed me. So we talk."

* * *

 _ **\- So, yeah, the Doom-Guy cameo is in honour of the release of DOOM 4. I'm super hyped. For anyone that doesn't know, Doomguy is the name dubbed for the player character because he's nameless, as far as I know.**_

 _ **-Far Harbour DLC just released, so have fun, guys!**_

 _ **-Thanks again for supporting! *Virtual blood-bonds***_


	26. Doom-Guy

**Chapter 26: Doom-Guy**

* * *

Ilya glowered across the cavern at the Dark Blood raider, eyes narrowed into him, willing them into weapons that could slice through the distance, and him. He looked like a monster, his pale skin lavishly adorned in bloody red patterns, scars, and tattoos, but unlike Clay-Crawler's claw markings, he was marked by a variety of fangs. Accessories enwrapped several limbs, arm bands spiked with severed human fingers, anklets with animal claws, a belt studded with eyeballs, and a jawbone biting around the circumference of his neck. His entire body was on display but for scant loincloth and elaborate headdress of a human skull, dipped in red and fashioned with dangling teeth of many sources, like braided hair.

"Shy?" Doom-Guy asked silkily in their silence, a decayed smile plaguing his face. Even from this distance, he was ugly as fuck. "No need for shy. Come out, talk, like leaders."

Dogmeat was standing before him, poised in aggression, hackles flaring, barking his threat. This was Dogmeat's killer. He was already dead to Ilya.

"How about fuck you!" she served out on a blade of hatred. Every thread of her restraint was active in keeping her from dashing out and simply shooting him in the face. Whatever hand he had to play better be good, or she would do just that.

To her response, he barked a laugh. "Impressed again. A woman! With such anger. Women make good leaders, like to talk more, act less on anger. Anger makes good fighter, but good leader? Hmm..." his taunting hum trailed off into amusement, now smug little hums that riled Ilya even more. Her upper lip twitched, fingers crushing into the rock she leaned against, imagining them around his throat.

"You piece of shit. What's stopping me from stepping out right now and shooting your face off!?"

"Mistake, woman," he answered, patronising. The device in his hand was gestured with. "See this? Yes?" He then indicated with another meaty hand toward the cages bordering the cavern, the specimens squealing from within. Half of them had been cooked from the mini-nuke, Ilya realised, but there were still an overwhelming number of them. "See them? Ah. Yes. Will release cherubs. No escape for you." His final sentence was a taunt full of a predator's delight.

So it wasn't for slave collars. She had some room to manoeuvre without having to worry about putting the Ghouls in danger. Good. Because she really, _really_ wanted to rip his throat out. "What's stopping you? Go ahead!" she snarled, seeking his angle. "We'll kill our way through to you and then I'll rip your throat out with my bare hands!"

Hancock was grinning wildly and nodding his head, clearly onside with her tactics, but Deacon slipped down his shades to pass her cautioning eyes.

Doom-Guy gave another laugh, buried within his chest. "What's stopping me? Loss of resource." The shrug of admittance he gave seemed unfitting on his savage form. "Cherubs _will_ be killed, but not enough for you to win. Takes time to breed, feed, grow. Not want to waste precious resource." Again, that patronising tone that vexed Ilya.

"The fuck do you want, then?" she allowed him, hating to give even an inch.

"Simple. Survival."

This time it was Ilya's turn to laugh, and it trickled out in disbelief with such a dark, maniacal quality that it sounded foreign even to her. "You think I'm just gonna let you go? After what you've done down here? Fuck no. I know who you are. I saw you back there, before the cave-in you set up for us. Dogmeat's dead because of you." She let her anger burn up from her core and feasted on it. "You deserve to die."

Clay-Crawler wound his grip tighter on his shotgun and fidgeted with incensed eagerness, but Hancock rested a grounding hand upon his shoulder.

"Dogmeat? Name of your dog?" Doom-Guy enquired with interest, ignoring the threat in Ilya's tone. "Good name. Must have been good dog."

"Fuck you."

The raider nodded his head to that, as if understanding her anger. "Wrong though, woman. I was near no cave-in. No raiders were. We fought off ferals for long time. Long fight. Cave-in drew them in from throughout all mine. We fought in here only."

"Liar. You're a fucking liar!" Ilya yelled out in denial. "I saw you in the dark! Just standing there, watching us, like the sick fuck you are!"

"Sick fuck? Hmm. Yes. But liar? No." Then, his throat rattled off a knowing chuckle, drawing it out. "Mines make some see things, hear things, feel things. Haunted, some said. Soft raiders from the Commonwealth not come this deep down. Afraid. Of ferals. Of the dark. Of ghosts... Have _you_ seen these ghosts?"

Ilya held her tongue, feeling something cold slither down her spine. Darting shadows, looming shapes, fingers in the dark. She caught Deacon's glance but tried to ignore it.

"Ahhh," Doom-Guy concluded with satisfaction, "losing yourself, yes? I see it in many out in the Blood Lands. Minds are soft, damaged, prone to sickness. Most lose will to live. Become food for the strong. Maybe, then, what you saw in the dark was just a ghost..."

Ilya shook off the sinister chill. She wasn't weak. He would know soon, and he would regret his words. He was just playing her, fear mongering her sanity. "Shut your face," her growl quivered despite her attempt. "You're not getting out of this. You were there, and I wasn't the only one to see you. Clay-Crawler chased you back here. You're just a lying, coward scum!"

"Coward!" Clay-Crawler echoed her, unable to contain himself any longer.

"Wrong," Doom-Guy insisted, still with his patronising tone. "And Clay-Crawler," he then diverted, as if suddenly remembering that Clay-Crawler was there. "Calling _me_ coward? Who was it that cried and screamed like little bitch when Slay ordered you punished for refusing her fucks? Ungrateful maggot. Should feel honoured to fuck with Slay. Great woman. Strong, hard. And _great_ tits!" He grew very enthusiastic with those last few words, even animating clutching at a woman's breasts with his hands as if they weighed him down.

"Slay cruel woman!" Clay-Crawler denied. "Once choked!"

Deacon darted a surprised look over at the raider. "What, with her tits?"

Clay-Crawler only shook his head with a frustrated frown, then re-enacted the scene by wrapping his hands around his own throat and pulling a face of choking strain.

"Ah," Deacon nodded, though seeming a little disappointed. "Gotcha. Sorry." Hancock cuffed him around the back of the head and he shrugged out his embarrassment.

Ilya rolled her eyes and ground her jaw, focusing back on Doom-Guy. "I lost a friend because of your sick trick. So now you have to die. Either you drop that thing, and I make it quick, or we do this the hard way, and I make sure you feel everything I do to you!"

"Still wrong, woman," the raider held firm. "I am great fighter, but to cut down all ferals alone to reach you? Unlikely. Did _not_ cause cave-in. And if you make mistake choice, you won't win fight. Cherubs will swarm. Then you will be mine to make _you_ feel everything I do to you." Her flesh crawled in revulsion. Much to her chagrin, she couldn't detect even a sliver of fear in his vocals, or sense any sly deception.

She slid her eyes to Clay-Crawler. "You did actually see the raider in the dark, right?"

He stared, gnawed his lip, then lowered his head and shook it. Stunned, Ilya scowled at him, then felt herself turn cold-blooded.

Then, whose silhouette had she seen in the dark...

Doom-Guy was laughing again, softly, enjoying this revelation far too much. "You see now. Your mind is lost, woman. Seeing ghosts. I hear it in your voice. I know madness. I _am_ madness."

Dogmeat was still snarling so viciously at the raider that Ilya was adamant that he was to blame for the canine's death. Maybe not directly, but he was the source. He had to be. She needed him to be. And he wouldn't get away with it.

She rose above his taunts. "We're here for the prisoners. How about this: you let them go, and we let _you_ go." _And then I stab you in the back._

Doom-Guy seemed to consider this, humming to himself. "I like this. Right choice, woman. Deal."

Too easy. "Clay," Ilya called quietly. "Do you know this Doom-Guy?"

The young raider nodded. "Yes. Tortured by him. Also, once cleaned his feet. Smelled bad."

She bypassed that and continued with her goal. "What can you tell me about him?"

Thinking for a moment, Clay-Crawler took the question very seriously. "Deals with the dead. Drains blood from bodies. Mutilates for totems. Kills prisoners, sacrifices for the Dark Blood Sea. Left Blood Lands many moons ago to come here. Is cruel. Good fighter. Bad man."

"You said you're good at reading people's faces, getting things from their expressions. Do you think he's bluffing?"

The raider peeked up over his cover, studied Doom-Guy standing out in the open with his finger poised over the trigger of the device, and frowned thoughtfully.

"I think he's being straight about the cave-in, for one thing," Deacon pitched in. "I never saw anyone in the dark, either."

Ilya scowled at his input. "Not what I was asking." She angled her eyes back on Clay-Crawler, sharpening them expectantly.

He licked his lips. "Think Doom-Guy will betray, release cherubs."

Forced to think tactically, Ilya growled and leaned back from the rock, feeling her chance of killing him slipping away. It was either be reckless and dirty for revenge, or be honourable and walk away from this, but forever with a grating scratch on her skull for never giving Dogmeat his vengeance.

"Come out, woman. Won't bite. I'm waiting," the Dark Blood incited sweetly.

Casting her squad a searching gaze, Ilya asked their opinions. Danse had been watching her intensely to gauge the exchange by her reactions, but when her eyes hit his, a questioning look fell over his dusty face. Right, he was partially deaf, she reminded herself. He had no idea what the hell was going on. Explaining everything would take too long. She wouldn't be getting any advice from _him_ on this.

When she shifted her gaze to Hancock and Deacon, Danse stirred at her dismissal, obviously not appreciating being left in the dark. "What's the situation?" he demanded, and rather loudly, despite himself.

Ilya started at his volume and then brought her finger to her lips. By the look of him, he didn't appreciate that much either, but he relented from speaking out again, almost pouting.

"The guy's a rat," Hancock snarled on turn. "I'm with Clay on this one. Don't trust a word that slips off his wormy tongue. The moment we get those Ghouls and turn our backs to get out of here, he'll set those little nasties loose and that'll be us."

Deacon was nodding his agreement. "Maybe he _is_ wanting to 'preserve his resources,' but I don't think that's the real reason he's holding this negotiation. You heard what he said when he stepped out here. 'Impressed. Good fighters.'" Deacon even imitated the voice, albeit with a mocking quality. "Right? I think the slime wants to catch us off guard, mutate us, ship us off home, strap us up with some pretty slave collars to fit in with the fashion trends, and make us fight in their army. I don't know about you guys, but I have living standards, and being a warrior slave isn't one of them. "

Stomach churning at the weight on her shoulders, Ilya wiped at the sweat on her brow and then slowly swept her hand back through her dust-riddled hair. Shit. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place. She evaded Danse's eyes, knowing he was judging her every movement and reaction with keen practice. What would he do in this situation? Actually, she knew exactly what he would do. The paladin favoured a forceful solution over peaceful compromise nearly every time. But hostages were involved, and he wouldn't approve of her endangering them for her vengeance. But, then again, they were Ghouls. Would he even care?

As if on cue, Doom-Guy offered her another incentive. "Woman not trust easily, I see. Hmm. You say your dog dead? What were killing wounds? Missing any organs? Limbs?"

Dogmeat barked more fervently at the raider, and Ilya gritted her teeth at the mere mention of Dogmeat on the savage's tongue. "The fuck do you care?"

"Just answer, woman."

She swallowed her pride, voice flat. "He was crushed by the cave-in."

"Ahhh. Yes. You see, I can fix. Heal your dog. Bring back to life."

"Bullshit."

"No bullshit. Cherub can heal wounds, call back spirit to body. Long process, not always work, but _has_ worked."

Ilya felt a small burst in her heart, a fraction of hope that she didn't want to rely on for fear it would betray her. She turned her gaze once more onto Clay-Crawler. He had been watching her, and nodded his head to her silent question. It was true. It was possible. Dogmeat could be brought back.

Still, the hope frightened her, too tantalizing, keeping her on guard. "What do you want in return?"

His answer was immediate. "I have challenge, hidden treasure I want. None have been successful to reach. You complete challenge, reach treasure, give to me, I will heal your Dogmeat. Simple. Then you take prisoners, let me go free, and we all win. Yes?"

Rolling this around, Ilya denied her companions her eyes, and slowly stepped out from behind the rocks, weapons slung, muscles tense, step cautious.

Doom-Guy smiled.

* * *

 _ **-Sorry for another delay. Hope you all enjoyed :)**_


	27. Echoes of the Dead

**Chapter 27: Echoes of the Dead**

* * *

"Harper."

Ilya ignored Danse's protest as she stepped into the clearing and toward the raider. Doom-Guy's black smile was predatory, a cunning glint in his eyes.

" _Woman_ ," he lavished her with piqued interest. Now on equal ground, she could see his face in detail. It was of lean leather, telling of a life lived out in harsh conditions that tested both physically and mentally. Scars of purpose ridged above his brows, and red streaks of blood hit outward from the nostrils, over the eyes, and out to the temples, disappearing over his bald scalp and under his grotesque headdress. A single line of blood slit across his throat as if a forerunner of death. Interspersed throughout all this patterning were black tattooed fangs, but most prominent were the two on either side of his craggy lips, imitating those of vampire fangs. Severe, black eyes stole over her figure and undressed her in one, salivating sweep, forcing her to repress a sickened shiver.

Doom-Guy's line of sight then darted up and past her, gauging warily, and Ilya heard and felt Danse moving up behind her. She knew without needing to look that he would be giving the raider his signature scowl, warning him off with it, and it eased her tension to know he was at her back. Without even knowing the full extent of the situation, he had followed her regardless.

Ilya jutted her chin in renewed confidence. "Your challenge?"

The raider settled his dark gaze back upon her and curved his lips again just for her. "Follow me."

He turned, but Ilya wasn't finished. "The prisoners. I want them freed first."

"Two-part deal," Doom-Guy said, angling his head her way but continuing ahead. "Part one first."

She ground her jaw but didn't argue, passing Danse a glance over her shoulder before following the raider. Danse gave her a wordless frown, but followed in her wake. The others also fell into step.

"Could two of you please go back and bring Dogmeat here?" she asked them on thought. "We can handle this guy."

Hancock nodded and whacked at Deacon's shoulder for him to come along. "No problem, Ilya. You just keep a close eye on him. Don't let him jerk you around."

"Yeah, be careful," Deacon seconded, then applied to Danse, "Keep her safe. Don't let her do anything... _Ilya_."

Danse must have heard that, because he issued a nod and a taut, "I won't."

Satisfied, Deacon looked back to Ilya, hesitating only a moment. "We'll be back before you know it."

She nodded thankfully to both and then followed back behind Doom-Guy as he led her, Danse, and Clay-Crawler down through the ominous tunnel.

"Harper," Danse spoke after a moment in hushed tones, "I would appreciate a SITREP right about now..." So she quickly filled him in on the deal made with the raider and his claim that Dogmeat could be saved. He was sceptical of that, until she told him it was confirmed by Clay-Crawler, who nodded again to Danse's doubtful glance. Still, he didn't like the position she had gotten them into, and Danse was not the type of man to stand by quietly when he sensed trouble. "This is too risky, Harper. Even for the sake of Dogmeat. Your decision could have dire consequences for all of us."

"I have to do this."

"At the end of the day, he _is_ just a dog."

Ilya shot him a sidelong glare as they moved. "He is _not_ just a dog. Not to me... You would do the same."

"...For who, exactly?" he sought, lost.

"You know exactly who." Cutler. At his sudden silence, regret furled in her stomach. Why did she have to say that?

Entering the tunnel introduced them to a damp, ancient air. There was an eerie chill in here that touched down to Ilya's bones, and her breath echoed off the cold stone. Dogmeat was there too, stalking right on the raider's heels, an incessant growl rumbling in his throat. Right behind the man, not a few steps away, Ilya's hand itched for her sidearm to end him right there, a swift bullet through the back of the skull. But his thumb was so dangerously snug over that device switch that she feared a single hint of action would have those cages unleash the horde of specimens upon them all. She quelled the itch.

"The Dark Blood," Doom-Guy announced with a ceremonious sweep of his arm. They had exited the tunnel to a smaller cave, darkness kept at bay by many lit candles, their flames subtly dancing in the draft the visitors brought with them and casting flickering silhouettes against the surrounding walls. The focal feature was the cave pool in the centre of the area, not full of water but of a reflective maroon liquid—the Dark Blood.

Ilya stared into its depths with unyielding intensity, and it was a moment before she realised that this intensity went beyond her own curiosity. She was physically unable to tear her eyes away.

It hit again, that flash in her skull that overrode her senses. She was standing amid a ritual ceremony, people kneeling before a man, worshiping the words he recited, their mouths mimicking his. Candles illuminated the small space in much the same way as they had just before. Was this pre-war? What were these people doing down here? Was the hidden treasure theirs? Did they hide it down in the pool? She dared not move, but sought out the meaning to this scene, though inexplicably knowing it was lost to time. They were all dead. Only their echoes remained. Why did she keep seeing their echoes? Was this real, or was it all in her head? Was she hallucinating? Was she delusional?

She turned with painstaking slowness, like she was tethered by gravity, and looked back up the tunnel to the cavern. More candles lit the pathway. Danse and Clay-Crawler were no longer there.

"Danse? Clay?"

Her words rippled off the rock and were repelled back to her, louder, caught in a ceaseless motion between her and the rocks that continued to hit back at her, growing in volume with each wave. She pressed at her temples to stifle the sudden headache, the shouts inside her head aggravating it.

And then, just as before, it all snapped back. The shouts were gone, but the pain it induced was still there. It stabbed at the backs of her eyes. Stabbing, stabbing, stabbing, like needles. Her fists were against her temples. Pressure. Pain. Sharp pain. Danse. Close. His form engulfed her, his giant hands firm around her arms.

"—hear me? What's wrong? Say something," he was imploring in barely contained distress.

Ilya swallowed and caught a ragged breath, slowly unclenching her fists from her temples and letting her arms drop away. Danse released her arms but didn't recede, brow furrowed and eyes darting between both hers. "I just," she stammered, staring right through him, "I just got this really bad headache come on out of nowhere..."

He stared at her. "You don't look well. Do you need water, something to eat? Perhaps you should sit down a moment and rest."

"No, I'm fine, really. Probably just the Med-X wearing off."

"Or the ghosts in the dark," Doom-Guy murmured, and they both turned to see him eyeing Ilya with dark knowing. "Have many ghosts?" He tilted his head inquisitively. "We all have ghosts. I see ghosts of all I kill." They watched in disturbed silence as he paced languidly closer to the pool of blood and oil, stooping down to skim a hand over the surface. It rippled. "Leaders call me mad, deluded. Maybe I am." He stood, palm outstretched to them to show it slick with dark blood. "But they not know madness. Not _my_ madness." A finger singled out Ilya. "Not _your_ madness. There is comfort in it. Yes? A place to hide. A thing that knows you. A thing that speaks to you. Your own world, inside yourself." With that, he took a step in for Ilya, bloody palm taking the lead.

"Don't even think about touching her," Danse snarled upon raising his rifle and taking a protective step across Ilya, barring the raider's way. Pushed back behind Danse's bulk, she lost complete view of the raider.

There was a brief pause, then she heard Doom-Guy scoff. A sudden shift of his bare feet had her darting out from behind Danse in time to see the raider slip in with the speed of a feline and press his palm to the paladin's chestplate, withdrawing in an agile hop. Caught off guard, Danse staggered back with a surprised grunt, and stared down at the bloody handprint now defiling his armour. Ilya winced internally. Not the armour...

Doom-Guy chortled loudly. "Big man scared of some blood? Would make poor fighter!" His peals of laughter had him smacking at his thighs to handle it, utterly impressed by himself.

Recovering, Danse turned up a hard, blazing glare on the man, raising his rifle once more. "You filthy degenerate!"

Anticipating his reaction, Ilya lurched for his barrel and pushed it down before he could get the shot off. "No! We need him."

For a moment, she thought he would shrug her off and laser the man down regardless, but he ground his frustration in his jaw and stood down. "If it weren't for the possibility of reviving Dogmeat, I would shoot him down right now and take our chances against those specimens."

"I know," she said delicately, thanking him with her eyes. There had been so much he had put up with during their journeys together across the Commonwealth, from synths, to ghouls, to super mutants, all for her sake. Words couldn't express how much she appreciated that, and she hoped her eyes could.

Doom-Guy was watching them with an unsettling fascination, his thumb caressing the device trigger. When Ilya asked again what his challenge was, he gestured to the Dark Blood. "Down there is treasure. Blade. Sacred. Known only by spirit people. They say it wields great power, to poison blood and give sickness, even without killing wound. Many tried to reach. None have. Gave up, or drowned. Dark Blood is thick, covers eyes, hard to swim in. Woman is good swimmer?"

Ilya studied the thick sludge and shifted her weight, dreading the thought of submerging in it. "I can swim," she answered cautiously. "In water. Not sure if I can say the same about blood and oil..."

"This is ridiculous..." Danse muttered bitterly at her side.

Doom-Guy only smirked with delight at Danse's palpable rage, then glided it toward Ilya. "Well?" The word was a taunt.

Crossing her arms to think, she gazed again at the pool, wondering if the bodies of the victims it had taken were still down there or not. Did it matter if they were? It was a pool of blood, after all. She sighed. If it meant getting Dogmeat back without risking everyone's lives, then she had to try.

"Okay. Let's get this over with."

Danse snapped his head to her. "You can't be serious."

Ilya stepped closer to the pool in the ground, avoiding his gaze. "If this is what it takes to get Dogmeat back, then yeah, I'm serious."

She heard him follow her step with his loud clunks. "We have no idea what's really in that disease-riddled muck."

"I'm sure it's nothing modern medicine can't fix." She spotted several pairs of goggles strewn around the edge of the pool by some small rocks—probably from all the previous attempts—and plucked up a pair to examine the seals.

Danse wasn't giving up. "What if it's a trap? There could be a mirelurk nest in there for all we know."

Ilya wasn't giving in. "Then I'll stab their eyes out with my knife." Draping the goggles around her neck, she disarmed and began to unbuckle her leather armour piece by piece, dropping them carelessly to the ground. Clay-Crawler darted in to collect them like a mute servant, then scurried back over to a corner as if to hide against the rocks. He seemed unsettled.

A metal hand caught her arm, and she was forced to meet Danse's eyes. They were firm, but a frantic concern wavered within the brown depths. "You're not well, Harper. I can't let you do this; for your own sake. Let me do this instead."

Stunned only for a moment by his sudden intensity, Ilya balled the fist of the arm he clutched and then ripped it away. "You're not my mentor anymore, remember?" She let the barbed irony drip from her words. "And we both know you can't hold your breath even a minute underwater for all that muscle your blood needs to fuel. I'm doing this." She spun from him and then took a knee to work on the buckles of her combat boots, ridding herself of their weight and then taking a moment to consider the Dark Blood and harden herself against the sharp stench it clogged her nostrils with.

Danse was silent for the entirety of her study, but then when she moved forward with the intension of dropping down to the lip of the pool, she heard the telltale pop and hiss of his armour's pressure seals. Frowning, she turned as he stepped down and around, his expression dark, clearly not relishing the idea of being free of his protective shell in the den of the enemy.

"Well I'm going to need to be prepared to dive in after you if I need to, aren't I," he grumbled in answer to her silent question.

Ilya stared at him wordlessly. He was one tenacious bastard. She had to settle him. With much consideration, she stepped closer and placed a hand to his broad shoulder, feeling the muscle beneath tense at her unexpected touch. After all this time, he still wasn't used to her touch. But his steely veneer softened when her gaze sank into his, and the muscle of his shoulder relaxed under her hand. It still felt surreal just to touch him, and she realised that she, too, was still unaccustomed to it. She yearned for more. How she longed to brush her fingers across his cheek, to cradle his stubbled jaw like she had just before, after the explosion, but to really _feel_ the warmth of his skin on her palm instead of missing the moment in all the rush and worry.

"I'll be fine, Danse." She watched as a myriad of emotions warred over his features until finally settling into a nod, his jaw pulsing to clamp down on any words of retaliation. She really appreciated that restraint. "Just keep an eye on this guy for me," she flicked her head at Doom-Guy.

"Two eyes," Danse confirmed, throwing a glare at the raider who stood observing in silence. His eyes settled back into hers and that melting returned. It was a long moment before Ilya could bring herself to slide her hand off his sturdy shoulder and step away. The moment she relinquished contact with him, she felt overcome with a cold hollowness, the return of that void that imploded her core the moment she lost Nate. Utterly alone. Normal again.

 _I am strong. Come on. For Dogmeat._

Now that she had convinced Danse that she would be fine, she just needed to do the same for herself. _Oh god I'm gonna drown in this shit._ She caught sight of Clay-Crawler cowering near the entrance. "And you," she directed an index finger at him, "don't do anything stupid."

"No stupid," he nodded his head in agreement, then swapped all her gear to one hand and gave her the thumbs up with the other.

Gathering a breath, Ilya pulled on her goggles, adjusted them comfortably, and then sat at the edge of the pool and dipped her legs in without a second thought. _Aw this is nasty._ It was room temperature, and not as sludgy as she had expected, but the psychological impact of submerging in bloody oil could not be ignored. It was just straight-up gross. She swished her legs to get a feel for it, seeing the blood stain the blue of her vault suit into a purple gore.

"Don't get in eyes or mouth," Clay-Crawler advised from the gloomy recesses of the cave. "Tastes bad, burns throat, stings eyes."

 _Yeah, no shit._

Doom-Guy just stood aside, watching her with that keen interest. Maybe he hadn't expected her to go through with it. Well fuck him.

Taking rapid breaths, she sucked in a final one and then dropped in, diving down and pushing off with her feet. She couldn't see shit, and after a few strokes, it was clear to her that she wouldn't be getting deep fast enough without some leverage. She angled her body parallel to the sides of the shaft and groped at the rock with blind feeling, tugging herself down. The blood was in her nostrils and stung its way through her sinuses, goading her to gag, but she fought to keep her lips sealed. Somehow, she could taste it; maybe her tastebuds were leeching from her nostrils. It was as expected, metallic with a sharp, burned chemical aftertaste. Her first exhale curdled the blood through her nostrils and enhanced the sting, pushing a cough from her mouth and granting the filth entrance through her teeth. It was vile beyond words. She doubted even Danse could do it justice with his vocabulary.

 _Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Swimming, swimming, swimming._

When her hands met resistance in the form of what she gathered was the bottom of the shaft, she let herself drift in place while her hands danced around in search for anything vaguely blade-shaped. She briefly feared getting her fingers sliced off, but upon her second exhale and an ensuing strain in her lungs, she ceased to care for her already-butchered fingers.

With further searching, she discovered an opening in the rock wall and figured it was another branching cave. But she didn't have the air to explore further, so pushed herself back up to the surface. The moment she breached, strong hands were upon her and hauling her up to the edge of the pool. Blinded by the oily sludge over her goggles, all she could do was retch out what had invaded her mouth and spit desperately to rid herself of the putrid taste. But it was there to stay.

Someone guided up her face with their fingers on her jaw, and then something was wiped across the lenses of her goggles. She saw Danse examining her before he wiped a bandage cloth at her mouth to aid her in ridding the taste.

"Did you find anything?" he asked gently, hopefully.

Ilya suppressed another dry retch and spat again. "It drops down pretty far, then opens out to another cave. This time I'll know exactly where to go."

"Ahhh," Doom-Guy uttered from the edge of the pool, squatting as if waiting for a fish to leap out, "the sacred shrine. Spirit people spoke of this. Was once a place of much worship."

Danse craned a venomous look over at the raider. "If your spirit people said anything useful that could help her find this weapon, tell us, or there will be hell to pay."

The shady raider adopted a look of innocence. "Spirit people speak in riddles. Hard to understand most times. Why would I not help woman find what I desire? Hmm?"

The answering glare that Danse deployed spoke enough of his loathing. He refocused on Ilya. "Ready to try again?"

"Hell yeah. Good times. Let me at it." He even grinned in sympathetic amusement at her sarcasm.

She was at the opening at the base of the shaft in no time, probing her way in and pawing along the ground for guidance. Her hands identified steps of some kind, so she followed them on a whim. Her lungs began to burn again. _I better not lose track of where I came in. God, if I got lost in here..._ Pushing her mounting panic deeper within her mantle, she surged on, kicking out her legs in wider arcs to increase her pace.

By the time she felt something resembling a pedestal, her lungs were straining, blood calling for oxygen. Her hands began to fumble out in search for the treasure, knocking against something solid and bulbous. Hands retracing their path like feelers, she patted at the object and then immediately pulled her hands away. That was a mini-nuke. What the hell was this place?

Right when she was about to withdraw and paddle for escape, her fingers brushed something else solid, but slim and elongated. This better be it. She groped for the hilt and snatched it away in a hurried spin, kicking off the pedestal with desperate feet. Her last exhale of expired air made her lungs shrivel up and heart thrash a deprived beat. A strained whine accompanied it, and beckoned on a narrowing of her consciousness. She felt she was either going to succumb to the hunger of her lungs or black out from self-restraint. Her hands were scrabbling along the ground and feet kicking in frenzied need, through the opening, arcing up the shaft, clawing the rock like a lifeline. The seconds were torturous, aching to her core and numbing to all else but for the goal she could no longer remember. Her existence was shredded down to the pursuit of this one goal that she must reach.

And she reached it. Her body sensed the breach before her mind did, dragging in air with a ghastly sound of pure sustenance. The violent cough came next, shredding up her throat, but before she could wholly release it, harsh fingers tore at the skin of her arms and then seized them, wrenching her backward in the blood. She yelled and kicked out uselessly before her back crashed against the lip of the pool.

"Let her go!" she heard Danse bark in alarm, but the harsh fingers caught her flailing wrist and snatched the blade from her before anything else could happen. She heard nothing but sloshing fluid and angry breathing, because the blade was sharp against her pulsing throat.

Blind, heaving in air, and dangled in the Dark Blood by a hand on her hair and threat at her throat, Ilya could do nothing but grimace at the pain ripping over her scalp and keep still in Doom-Guy's hold. Of course it was him. The fucker.

"Drop gun," Doom-Guy demanded, pressing the blade harder against Ilya's throat to emphasise his threat, "and we make new deal."

* * *

 _ **-Couldn't resist the Nemo reference... Thought I should also mention that these 'visions' that Ilya is having are actually in-game in Dunwich Borers. You have these flashbacks when you reach certain points. Fallout 3 had them too, under some building when you find a Glowing One ghoul, waaaay creepier too. When I explored it I thought it would be a cool event to include in the story, and use it to play on Ilya's developing psychosis. It's not the Sight, but her gaining the Sight would be a cool story arc, and I have put some thought into that. The 'sacred blade' is also a hidden legendary weapon called Kremvh's Tooth, down in the cave pool. Dunwich Borers is a really interesting, and spooky, location. You guys should check it out next time you play**_

 _ **Heaven in a Rage – You're too kind, words can't express how much I appreciate all that :D About Danse training Clay... that miiiiight be on the future cards... not telling :3**_


	28. Bloody Mess

_**-Foreword:**_ This chapter features graphic violence and torture, but because of FanFiction's new content policies, I've filtered out the offensive content here, and I was too scared to even tweak it into suggestive torture just in case it gets banned. You might miss some character development and minor plot foreshadowing, sorry. For the uncut version, there will be a link in my profile to the story at ArchiveofOurOwn, just remove the spaces after the brackets and copy paste the link since FanFic doesn't allow active links to outside sites. As for future explicit content, I'll let you know when AO3 has the full version so you don't miss out. Just beware for this one if you're squeamish, it gets pretty gory. Enjoy! :D lol...

* * *

 **Chapter 28: Bloody Mess**

* * *

Ilya could see nothing through the thick film of dark blood over her goggles, but strained her eardrums for every resonance in the small cave. _Danse, you better kick this guy's ass or I'll kick yours._

"Want to save your woman?" Doom-Guy breathed above her, the reek of his breath almost as foul as the Dark Blood around her. "Then drop gun, stay back, like good slave."

"Not a chance in hell," Danse menaced in return, and Ilya could almost grin at his defiance, had her throat not been at risk. "What's your plan, raider, disarm us and then release your specimens to enslave us?"

"Yes," the Dark Blood raider conceded without a hint of delay. "Enslave fighters, and lose no cherubs. Good, yes?"

Danse was rock-steady. "I'm afraid I'm not willing to let that happen. In taking this course of action you would gain nothing, and lose not only a potential slave, but your life, by your own misjudgement. Just let her go, and we can continue with our original deal."

"Hmm. Hard. Cold. Gamble to refuse. Not even for her?" Ilya felt the blade split her skin tauntingly, and trapped her growl of pain behind her teeth. "Still refuse? Hmm?" Doom-Guy mocked. Danse was silent, but Ilya could hear him shift his weight upon the gravel, hesitant. Goddamnit.

"Danse just shoot the fu—" she was thrust down under the Dark Blood before she could even get the words out, feeling the gunk fill her mouth and choke her airways. She coughed out bubbles that curdled and felt she would drown right there and then, except she was pulled back up by the hair and spared a precious gulp of air. The blade was still at her throat, but she still hacked out the burning filth with desperate thrashing until the hand that held her yanked her head back so viciously she cried out and forced herself to still, chest heaving.

"Do that again, and you'll regret it," Danse threatened, but Ilya detected an unfamiliar chord to his usually stable voice. He was nervous.

"Not in place to make threats, slave." And Ilya was shoved under again, her cry of frustration drowned out, along with her composure as she struggled against the raider's wiry grip. This time, there was no quick reprieve. He kept her under for a harrowing length of time, the blade taking shallow samples of her flesh in her thrashings. Her lungs were ablaze but she screamed out regardless, scratching her broken nails at the raider's cruel hand in her hair.

And suddenly, there was air, and she was gasping raggedly, wheezing between angry grunts and coughs to clear her throat of the shit.

"—just stop, let her out!" she heard from Danse, amongst other words she hadn't caught over her loud panic. She swallowed, gagged, then coughed more as she comprehended. He had caved. Damn it, Danse.

The harsh hands hefted her up until she could blindly clamber out of the pool, relief washing over her before she was shoved and sent crashing to the ground, screaming her futile rage. More hands were on her, but soft and caring this time, lifting her upright.

"I got you," Danse's deep, soothing voice encompassed her as he helped tear off the goddamned grime-caked goggles. His face was a welcome sight as he crouched over her, brushing the sticky hair from her face with tender, sensitive fingers. But _his_ face. It was so despairing, bruised by it.

"I'm sorry. I—" his words caught in his throat a moment, expression dissolving into shame, "I didn't mean for that to... I didn't mean for you to suffer like that."

All the fury was quenched from her blood, and it was only then that Ilya realised she was clinging desperately to his arms, entire body shaking from trauma. Making an effort to gather herself, she denied his shame with a small shake of her head. Her throat was raw and pulsating, so she whispered her words. "I know. It's okay. It's not your fault." He didn't nod, and his features were still arranged in shame. She felt she should say more, do more to console him, but how?

Doom-Guy broke their eye contact, now wielding Danse's laser rifle, the blade sheathed in the hip of his loincloth. "Good slaves. Now, let cherubs taste mind. Don't fight, or will hurt more." His lips peeled back from his teeth in an ugly sneer of satisfaction. With free hand, he produced the trigger device and was set to press the switch, when Clay-Crawler tore forward like the lunatic he was, bent low to tackle at Doom-Guy's waist. The laser that was discharged flew off-mark and merely grazed Clay-Crawler's shoulder as he propelled Doom-Guy into the Dark Blood. Their bodies were swallowed in a chaotic splash.

Ilya and Danse scrambled to their feet and raced to the pool, retrieving weaponry and reining aim in on the bubbling fluid, but nothing resurfaced.

"We have to—" Ilya started, but Danse pushed her back.

"Stay here." With that, he dived in and was gone before she could swear. She knew he could swim, they had run into a few situations where swimming was the only way to proceed, but she didn't know if he could swim competently. He said Rivet City—where he had lived in D.C—was a pre-war aircraft carrier in the harbour. Maybe he had learned to swim in the waters there. She just didn't know. Ilya paced. What if he hadn't? What if he was just an average swimmer? What if he was getting his ass kicked down there right now? What if he was already dead?

Fuck it. Ilya was set to dive in after him, when a bald head popped up from the red and stroked for the edge. She grabbed Clay-Crawler's slippery arms and helped him out, just as Danse resurfaced. She was helping him up when Doom-Guy breached next and made a lunge for Danse with ferocious speed, eyes wide and livid even through the effects of the harsh liquid.

Danse was torn from Ilya's hands and pulled back under within seconds, the dark liquid burping up with their submerged warfare. Shrieking in denial with hands floundering through the muck, Ilya managed to latch onto the buckles of Danse's uniform and gave a mighty pull, bringing him back in a gush of deep scarlet. Doom-Guy was attached, but not to his advantage. Danse had him in a secure headlock, and the raider's fists were bashing at Danse's body in wild wrath.

Clay-Crawler dashed in to help Ilya, and together the two lifted the wrestling pair from the pool. There was a scuffle on the ground for control—it seemed Doom-Guy was adept in the art of wrestling. Grunts, limbs, and bloody oil flew out in bestial mayhem, all manner of training and prudent thought cast aside. Ilya caught a dazing strike to the temple and was trampled under Doom-Guy's weight as he clawed over her in pursuit of Danse. Her ribs—where she had been lanced by a bullet at the beginning of the raid—suddenly bloomed with pain again to remind her it was still there.

She had no idea how or when he had managed to slip away, but Clay-Crawler was suddenly standing over them all with his previously surrendered shotgun. He used the stock to bash at Doom-Guy's spine, rendering him limp, which in turn, released his clawing fingers from around Danse's throat, and caused him to slump bodily upon Ilya.

Clay-Crawler howled something gibberish and brought down the weapon again, and again, and again, untamed, lost to his rage.

"Stop! Stop it!" Ilya's screams ripped up her throat from beneath the now-unconscious raider. But Clay-Crawler was too enslaved by his taste for violence that he didn't hear her, bashing and bashing until Danse was on his feet and able to snatch the shotgun away and restrain him.

Then, there was dead silence. Only heavy panting carried through the air. Groaning, Ilya rolled Doom-Guy's weight off her and stood on frail legs, taking in the sight of the battlefield with stinging eyeballs.

 _Bloody mess... Just, bloody mess._ There was no other way to describe what had just happened here.

Danse and Clay-Crawler stood just as aimlessly, drenched in crimson gore, adrenaline seeping out with hard breaths, gaping at her as she gaped back.

Footsteps on stone. All three turned to see Deacon and Hancock at the cave entrance, carrying Dogmeat's corpse between them, their eyes bulging, jaws slack, staring.

For an elongated time, nobody uttered a word.

"...Oookaaay..." Deacon broke the trade fair of stares. "What the hell did we miss..?"

* * *

The sweet notion of bringing that decorative red streak across his throat to reality teased her mind as Ilya stood before the bound raider. He still slumbered, wrists and ankles secured by rusty chains they had found in the cavern, and was chained to the wooden column that stood a sentinel for torture beside the pool. Just filling herself with the sadistic sight of him pulled at a primal yearning in her being to end his existence right here and now.

Unfortunately, she still needed him to bring Dogmeat back.

Fortunately, however, there were methods to make that as unbearable as possible for him.

It was an acceptable compromise.

Braving a glance at Dogmeat's corpse reawakened fresh grief, and it complimented the deep fury that stroked her resolve. She had been carrying these burdens for so, so long, that the weight was now a part of her, an intimate companion that she had moulded a sanctum for. There, it festered. There, she could harness it, draw from it. It was empowering. And to unleash it would be pure decadence.

Danse was beside her, arms crossed, eyeing the raider with equal contempt. "Something tells me he won't take kindly to his new position in our negotiations," he mused in satisfaction, and Ilya thought she could see a tiny smirk breaking his usual rigid cast. He was just as bloody as she was, the red soaking right through his uniform and encrusting it to his figure. It was drying, however, beginning to flake away in patches. The pair of them looked like psychopaths just back from a day of casual massacre.

"You never know, bondage is probably his thing." She snorted in hilarity at the quirked brow her words evoked. Danse then adjusted to her crude comment, looking back to the raider with a shrug in agreement.

"Well, it wouldn't surprise me," he admitted, humoured.

Stealing another glance over at him, Ilya couldn't keep her mind clean as erotic scenes of them together invaded her imagination. _Goddamnit. Stop it. Don't even go there. This is Danse you're thinking about. You really think he's into that?_

"I highly doubt he'd be willing to cooperate with us now," Danse went on proficiently while Ilya battled with her dirty mind.

At that moment, Hancock strode up on Danse's flank, and the two men exchanged eyes for a brief moment before cutting it off sharply. The Ghoul then regarded the inert raider. "So, who wants to get their hands dirty with the hard talk?" Dark delight oozed off every word.

Danse kept his gaze firmly on the raider as he responded. "By 'hard talk' I hope you're not implying torture."

"Interpret it however you want," Hancock returned coolly, scuffing a match on the metal armour plate over his thigh to light a cigarette. He brought it to the stub end and guarded it from drafts with a hand to suck in for the flame to catch. "But this rat's gonna need a serious work-over if we want anything outta him." Smoke was puffed from his decrepit lips.

Danse's scowl deepened. "That's not how we do things in the Brotherhood. As a joint operation, the Brotherhood has a say in this man's fate. I imagine that Elder Maxson would deem him a valuable source of information."

Ilya shifted her weight to a hip to cover her irritation. Brotherhood this, Brotherhood that. Fuck sakes. Doom-Guy was hers. She didn't go through all this shit down here just to lose him to Maxson. She was going to fight tooth-and-nail for him.

"I thought the Brotherhood didn't take prisoners of war," she commented mildly.

"Not customarily," Danse responded. "But for tactical advantages, we make exceptions. Though torturing for information is _strictly_ prohibited. Maintaining a level of standard is crucial in upholding our belief systems. We'd be no better than raiders if we resorted to such inhumane practises."

 _Right, because speciesism, xenophobia, and execution is humane..._

Ilya decided it was safer for everyone nearby to keep her lips sealed and moved on. "Let's get our Dogmeat back so we can get the hell out of here. I'll do the talking, work the charm, maybe put in a few threats here and there and say we wired up his device to some explosives on those specimen cages." She jiggled the trigger device in her hand. "That should get his thong in a twist."

Danse nodded his approval. "I've seen it for myself plenty of times to have faith in your way with words, Harper." His praise was then followed by earnest eyes. "Don't worry. We'll have Dogmeat back with us soon."

She smiled appreciatively to his words, and felt a pang of betrayal at what she had to do next. "This might take a while... Would you mind grabbing Deacon and guarding the cavern while this goes down? I don't want any ferals jumping us while we talk."

"Of course. Just call if you need anything." To her surprise, he didn't seem to suspect any ill intentions. She didn't know whether the fact of his ignorance to her capabilities made her even more of a monster or not...

Ilya watched uneasily as Danse encased himself in his power armour and strode from the small cave back up the tunnel in search for Deacon, who was with the released prisoners, explaining what he could to them and keeping them settled. As soon as his footsteps were out of earshot, she risked a look Hancock's way.

He pulled heartily on the last dregs of his smoke and then flicked it into the Dark Blood. "Well now, which body part should we pick at first?"

Ilya blinked. He had totally seen through her innocent act, while Danse had been oblivious. A guilty smile snuck up on her, and Hancock matched it with a devilish glint in his inky eyes. "I love you, John Hancock."

"Feeling's mutual, sister," he purred back.

Ilya tried not to think of her betrayal to Danse's ethics as she and Hancock slapped awake Doom-Guy. He peered at them groggily, then his face morphed into the epitome of hatred, specifically for Ilya. She smiled sweetly at him.

"Wakey wakey, fuckface," she chimed while pinching at his cheeks and tugging them into a resistant smile. He spat at her when she let go, so she thwacked him with a knuckled backhand. He spat blood that time.

"Fuck you, woman. Should have fed you to Dark Blood where you belong." His eyes were inflamed both with the oil and with his enmity.

Ilya gave him an agreeing look. "Yeah, you really should have. I _did_ warn you that if you wanted to do things the hard way, then I'd make sure you felt everything I did to you, and I'd really like to follow through today."

"Whore," was all he conjured for her.

She let his scorn right in, let it evoke her inner fury. She craved it, that rearing of fire that could make her invincible, even to herself. Ilya replaced her taunts with a hard mask. "Tell me how to bring back Dogmeat, and I won't feed _you_ to the Dark Blood."

"Your Dogmeat rots in Dark Deep now, whore. You never get him back." He dared a smirk. Ilya knew it wouldn't be that easy.

"Hancock," she summoned his attention, though her eyes were still fixed on Doom-Guy, "I think we might have to pull out the charm on this one. Would you mind grabbing that bandage cloth over there to hold against his mouth? We don't want him to wake the ferals with his screams."

"It would be my pleasure."

As the Ghoul moved to retrieve the cloth, Doom-Guy challenged Ilya's stare with equal animosity, not even a flicker of fear or interest in Hancock as he moved behind him in preparation. So breaking him was going to be a case of trial and error. Good. No pain, no gain.

Clay-Crawler was still present, always hovering nearby. He stood watching with timid excitement, clearly no stranger to what was about to happen. Yet, Ilya still felt responsible for his well-being. She stood and regarded him earnestly.

"Clay, if you don't want any part of this, feel free to walk away. You don't need to carry this on your conscience. But please don't breathe a word of this to the others. They would never approve." Her own conscience dragged on her, but she donned her mask again. "I need to do this. Do you understand that? I _have_ to do this." _Why? Do you even know? For vengeance? To vent? To harden yourself against the cruelty of your new life? To feel alive?_ _All of the above?_

Clay-Crawler was nodding so wildly that it brought her back from her soul-searching. "Yes. Must be done. Doom-Guy must pay in blood for all the dead. Must feel all pain he gave to slaves. Yes. Yes." He was buoyed on his toes like a child at Christmas, little eyes beaming, pale lips revealing a toothy grin. "Please. I help? Please?"

Ilya's own lips were restraining a smile of amusement. "Alright," she waved dismissively. "We're all going to hell, anyway." As he bounced in and gave Doom-Guy a taunting pat on the head, revelling in his coming payback, Ilya just shook her head.

 _We are so fucked up._

"Mind if I borrow your bat, Clay?" The next moment, she was casually swinging the nail-spiked bat through the air, getting a feel for its lethality, and purposefully flaunting its potential before the restrained raider, whose face was the picture of hate.

"One more chance," Ilya offered him. "Tell me how to revive Dogmeat."

He spat at her feet.

"I was hoping you'd make this fun," she accepted.

(Section cut. Check it out at Archive of Our Own)

He was gone. There was nothing left of him. Ilya—panting, numb, with Doom-Guy's blood drowning her hands—stayed like that at the edge of the pool for what felt like eternity. Comprehension never touched her mind, it kept to a safe distance to spare her the atrocity, wrapping up her fury back to the void, where it would hibernate, waiting.

Eventually, Hancock spoke behind her. "Damn. You're really one hell of a woman," he said in awe, an impressed chuckle following, but there was a faint catch to his voice. Disturbance. Ilya found herself unable to care.

"Let's get rid of the evidence," the Ghoul decided as he kicked Doom-Guy's wasted body over the lip of the pool, letting it flop down with a mild splash to sink to the depths. He stood there listlessly for a while as Ilya just remained on her knees. "What're we gonna tell the tin-can?"

She shook her head.

"Doom-Guy got free. Killed himself," Clay-Crawler provided simply.

"He was chained up pretty damn well," Hancock countered.

"Lied for freedom. Said would help. Then killed himself."

Humming, Hancock shrugged. "Suppose that'll do. Danse's gonna be pissed that we were so stupid to cut him loose, though."

Just another thing to add to his list grievances because of her. Ilya gathered what felt like her first breath and looked around at the crime scene, at the scattered tools and fresh blood. The thought of cleaning up the evidence of her sin was exhausting. "We need to... clean up," she murmured, pushing up to her feet and feeling the world gyrate for a moment.

They hurriedly disposed of the torture tools into the pool and wiped the puddle of fresh blood to join them, making the stain appear as if it was from the initial wrestling match from earlier.

Ilya stood, staring over at Dogmeat's body, lying there without life. It was wrong, so wrong. She couldn't see his spirit anywhere, now. Was he completely gone? Had Doom-Guy's death taken with it any chance of bringing Dogmeat back? He had been counting on her, and she failed him. But maybe they could figure it out on their own... Hope diluted her exhaustion. "The Brotherhood. Maybe they can help us."

Hancock wore a biased frown as he considered that. "You really think they would spend their precious resources to save a dog? Those bigots ain't got the best track record for generosity."

She bit her lower lip with sudden angst, knowing he was right. She hadn't exactly earned their generosity as of late, either. Maxson would be looking for a sensitive spot just like this to exploit and knock her down a peg. Maybe Danse could pull some strings...

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Hancock tugged her in for an uplifting squeeze. "But there's no harm in trying," he placated smoothly, but Ilya knew it was an empty gesture, that he didn't really believe they would find help in the Brotherhood. "Come on, sister. Let's get the hell outta this drag."

* * *

 _ **-And that's the end of Doom-Guy. I'm glad to get us past this section of the story and move on with the plot. It went on for a little longer than I expected it to. Story of my life when it comes to writing lol.**_

 _ **-So mods are finally here for Xbone! I haven't even finished Far Harbour yet, so I haven't had the chance to mess around much with the mods because I wanted to finish the dlc mod-free. I did have a quick go with the PEW laser mod, and the Randy Savage deathclaw though... Nearly pissed myself watching Danse fight him with his pew-pew lasers while I chilled with Catmeat :3 And now we can finally get his ass outta that goddamn armour! Would love to hear what your fav mods are :)**_

 _ **\- Heaven in a Rage - Yeah drowning is also one of my worst fears, I get anxiety watching underwater scenes in movies lol. I tend to write things that hit me personally for some reason - dying animals, drowning, etc. You probably had a hard time reading this chapter, too. Sorry!**_


	29. The Liberation of Dunwich

**Chapter 29: The Liberation of Dunwich**

* * *

Ilya's ears were full of Doom-Guy's noxious voice.

 _"_ _Can't hide from Red Menace."_

 _"_ _Dark Deep will swallow you whole and rip you for eternity."_

 _"_ _Listen to your madness, let it make you strong."_

"Clay," she whispered as they slowly walked up the tunnel, her voice echoing. "What's the Red Menace?"

"Isn't that the holotape game?" Hancock interrupted. "Love that damn game..."

Clay-Crawler gave the Ghoul a quizzical look, then shook his head and frowned. "Is radi— radition... rads," he struggled with the word, eventually just settling for the shortened version. "Red Menace, in sky, in air. Makes storm, sandstorm, sets fire to blood of earth, sets desert on fire."

Ilya shivered. For some reason, that haunted her. _Can't hide from Red Menace._ "So it's a rad-sandstorm, out in the desert. And the blood of the earth... the oil spills?"

The raider nodded, a troubled look in his eyes. "Dark Bloods worship earth blood, the black mess. Take for their pools and rituals. Red Claws attack places of earth blood, make them spill free, for Red Menace to zap at—" he made peculiar striking motions with his hands "—set fire to. Dark Bloods go out to stop fire and plug hole. Keeps them busy. Red Claws raid caves and camps, free slaves."

Clan wars, Ilya deduced. Sabotage and guerrilla tactics. It must be a constant warzone out there for territory, overlaid with radioactive sandstorms and lightning that set the desert on fire. It sounded even worse than the Glowing Sea, and that was saying something. "And the Dark Deep?" she then asked reluctantly.

"Place for dead. Underground." He pointed below their feet. "Where the sacrificed and cursed go. Bad place."

So it was the Dark Bloods' form of hell. Good to know...

The moment the three sinners graced the open cavern, Danse and Deacon snapped to, making their way over with expectant faces. Ilya's eyes were helplessly drawn to the Dark Blood handprint that Doom-Guy had left on Danse's chestplate; his last insult. Meeting Danse's eye, she felt sick with shame and promptly averted her gaze.

"Any luck?" Deacon called over.

Ilya didn't spare a glance, instead looking over at the state of the Ghoul prisoners as they huddled together for comfort. "He's dead."

"What?" Danse snapped as he came to a halt before them. His demeanour was quick to shift into severity, staring her down with that scowl. She tried not to wince.

Hancock took the reins, donning his talent for sly trickery. "The rat bastard offed himself first chance he got. Said he would help with Dogmeat, so long as we let him down. Next thing we knew, he was slitting his own throat and throwing himself to the Dark Blood."

Danse pinned Hancock with his unwavering glare, soaking that up. It didn't take him long to crack down on them. "Why on earth would you release him in the first place? Hadn't he already shown how conniving he was? Where did he even find a weapon to do that? We searched him thoroughly."

Ilya gave a lost and guilty shake of the head, feeling like a child under parental rebuke, so Hancock carried on the act without missing a beat. "He was fast, came at Clay and pinched his knife." Danse turned his scowl on Clay-Crawler, and the raider blinked widely at the sudden blame. Hancock lowered his voice. "You know what Clay's like—clumsy, a bit slow to catch on sometimes..."

Danse sighed irritably, still giving the raider the hard eye. "He has been a great liability, yes."

Poor Clay-Crawler. Ilya felt bad that he had caught the blame for this, the young man now the target of Danse's chagrin, and nobody in their right mind wanted to be that target. She knew all too well what that felt like. But maybe this would convince Danse to properly train the raider himself and help prevent future incidents... _Hancock, you cruel genius._

"Damn it," the paladin expressed his disappointment at events, glancing off at distant rock. "We had a real opportunity with him, not just for Dogmeat but for some high ranking insight on the Dark Bloods and their operations. Elder Maxson will be disappointed..." He brooded for a moment, then his eyes trailed back to Ilya, a softness on his brow that she didn't deserve. "What does this mean for Dogmeat?"

She shook her head with dejection, a broken sigh escaping her lips. "I don't know... I was hoping the Brotherhood could help, but..." she let her words trail off with uncertainty.

Danse nodded gently. "It may take some buttering up, but it won't be out of the question, given your position with us. That is... if you're still willing to work with the Brotherhood?"

Was she? She was pushing for an alliance between the Minutemen and Brotherhood, but was she still willing to work under Maxson in active duty, to help destroy the Institute and her son? Danse was giving her that subtle puppy-eyed look in hope, so she threw him a bone, nodding regardless of her indecision. "I am. But things are complicated now."

He blinked, then nodded again, understanding. "Well, you can be sure that I'll back your request for help with Dogmeat. I don't mean for this to sound cold, but there's an opportunity to observe and study his revival, which could lead to advancements in medical technology. Let that be an incentive for the scribes. We still have a chance to save him, Harper." Again, that soft brow, and a gentle, heartening smile. She smiled back, but she knew she was unworthy of his comfort.

 _You're a monster. After everything you've done to him, directly or behind his back, he still stands by you. He's incredible, and you don't deserve him._

They spent some time tending to the Ghoul farmers, giving them more rations and water, and checking over their conditions. They were gaunt, frail, dirtied by their own waste, and drew back sharply whenever someone tried to touch them. Infected scabs mottled their bodies, along with vicious bruises and raw skin where hot brands had marked them; all of which was evidence of beatings into submission, most likely at the hands of Doom-Guy. But aside from the malnourishment, dehydration, and minor wounds, they were alright, though they were withdrawn and reluctant to speak much. Hancock had the most success with them, as they were more willing to respond to him, perhaps because he was a fellow Ghoul.

"You got nothin' to worry about now. The big boss is good and dead. Just stick with us, enjoy the ride, and we'll get you out of here in one piece," he applied smoothly, crouching down to their level as they rested on the ground, and even removing his leather hat out of courtesy.

One of the women gave him a timid smile, raising her head up from her knees as she hugged herself. "Th-thank you... So, we won't have to go out into the vault now?"

"Nope, you're free Ghouls now, sweetheart," Hancock assured, unable to resist a mild flirt. "The only place you'll be heading to is home sweet home."

Danse shuffled his weight with stirred interest beside Ilya. "Vault?" he mused quietly to her. "That must be the Vault Prototype: 1D in Maxson's briefing. I wonder what they needed them for in there. It must have something to do with radiation, seeing as Ghouls are immune."

Ilya hummed thoughtfully. "Ask them," she coaxed him.

But Danse grew a hesitant look. "I'd rather not... wouldn't want to overwhelm them. Best to let Hancock deal with them, he seems to be doing an adequate job of settling them down."

Ilya observed him. The usual disgust she would expect of him in the face of Ghouls was absent, replaced instead with a tentative sympathy, like he was embarrassed by it.

Not long after, Hancock wandered back over to them with a solemn bearing, folding his arms across his chest. "Well it sounds like they've been through hell, but they should be all good once they're back home again." He cast his eyes down for a moment, then lifted his head upon a small chuckle. "It's funny. Somehow I feel responsible for 'em. Maybe just 'cause they're Ghouls, I dunno. Call me biased." He paused again, this time with his gaze seeing through the distance beyond them. "You know, I look at them and I think of all those Ghouls kicked outta Diamond City by Ratfuck McDonough, and I think that maybe this was my chance at redemption for not doing enough back then. If there are even more Ghouls out there, enslaved by these monsters and being forced through some vault death-trap, then this is my chance, my _real_ chance, at redemption, you feel?" His inky eyes flicked back up to Ilya, and he shrugged loosely. "Hell, maybe I'm just bein' all sentimental... but we did a good thing today, and it feels good."

Ilya was nodding along with Hancock, granting him a warm smile of understanding. This had been good for him. She knew how much the Diamond City coup had affected him throughout the years since. Taking on the Dark Bloods on their home turf would be personal for him.

"Heck yeah, good feels all around," Deacon contributed, dumping a hand on Hancock's shoulder and giving him a sportive rustle. "Once we get Dogmeat back—and we will get him back—" he shot Ilya a purposeful look, "then I feel a Sanctuary party-time coming on. Huh?" He looked at each of them to rally agreement. There were nods and grins. Ilya quickscoped Danse; he was smiling mildly along with them, but his eyes were hovering on Hancock with a deep consideration. Something told her that he just discovered a newfound respect for the Ghoul. If only he knew what she and Hancock had just done.

"Come on," Danse ushered them after a second of lingering. "Let's double back for the others, and get these prisoners out of here."

* * *

The harsh sunlight was just another serving of abuse for the day.

Emerging from the quarry, gilded in ash and dark blood, they were a source of thundershock. An expanse of faces gaped and stared, many suddenly halting what they were doing to join the trend, their mutterings caught by the wind. Brotherhood and Minutemen alike parted for the raid team and the freed prisoners as they trudged their way through, Danse in the lead with Dogmeat draped lifelessly in his metal arms.

Ilya braced herself for the deluge of questions and sympathetic faces once the crew saw Dogmeat's body. She half expected Star Paladin Groves to stomp her way over and apprehend her on the spot, shedding no mercy for their state, but she was nowhere to be seen. Probably ran back to the Prydwen with her tail between her legs to bitch to her elder about Ilya's backchat. Maxson was no doubt brooding up in his kingdom, pacing about on his perch like a king drunk on power but burdened by his loss of loyal subjects.

"Oh, god no," Piper was the first to breathe out her anguish at what Danse carried. She sought his face with wide, horrified eyes, as if asking if the canine was truly dead, then she centred her eyes on Ilya, and she must have found her answers there, because a shadow of mourning fell over her. She paled. "No. Not Dogmeat. Blue, I am so, _so_ , sorry."

Ilya was sulking up to the consoling woman before she could stop herself, allowing Piper to cup her bloodied face to assess her, then ensnare her in a comforting embrace. Ilya wished for the tears that would release her sorrow, but instead only found within herself a numb pit.

"What happened?" Piper asked of Danse after releasing Ilya.

"There was a cave-in. By the time we found him, it was too late."

His sombre words hung heavy in the air as the crew gathered in silent grief. Ilya pulled herself together enough to voice her hope, if a fool's hope. "But there's a way to get him back. The specimens, they can revive the dead." Their faces were a mosaic of hope and scepticism. She licked parched lips and pushed on. "We heard it from a raider down there, and Clay says it's true. We don't know how it works, the raider wouldn't tell us and Clay has only seen it happen from a distance, but we're hoping the Brotherhood will help us."

"I'll bear testimony for this to happen," Danse put in, for everyone's sake. His vow of support seemed to alleviate the doubt toward the Brotherhood's willingness to help, and nods were giving movement to the small gathering.

"Well it's worth a shot," Piper said, offering Ilya an uplifting smile, even if it was forced.

Nick strolled forward, a warm smile giving life to his worn face. It was for Danse. "I won't pull the wool over your eyes by saying I trust the Brotherhood as far as I can throw you, but if anyone can figure out how to bring our much-loved pooch back, it's you lot."

Danse was visibly uncomfortable with the synth coming forward and addressing him so frankly, giving an awkward nod, eyes unable to settle in one place. "We'll be sure to do the best we can," he managed civilly.

Nick issued the paladin a thankful tip of the head before turning to Ilya. "Don't you worry, kid. If there's a way, we'll find it. So you just hang in there until then, alright?"

His words and presence were so soothing that Ilya couldn't keep her bottom lip from wobbling with emotion. "I will. Thank you, Nick."

The Ghoul farmers, hovering weakly behind the raid team, were swiftly tended to by field scribes and Minutemen medics, but one stepped forward before he could be whisked away, his frayed skin of an ashen hue in compassion to that of Hancock's. There was a sincere quality to his features, despite them being lost to his eternal ailment.

"Wiseman, if you remember," he introduced himself, skirting his black gaze from Ilya, to Danse, to Nick. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss. Especially with it being on our account. Had a dog once, myself. Best friend I ever had. Some people just don't get that, you know." He paused for his condolences as the three, along with the rest of the group, gave faint gestures of agreement or understanding. "I just wanted to thank you again for what you did for us, it was a hell of a thing. None of us were expecting to get out of there as free people. We had pretty much resigned ourselves to either a prolonged life of slavery or a violent death in that vault they talked about."

Hancock moved in on the conversation, giving the fellow Ghoul a faint nod. "Any idea why they nabbed you? We knew they had a specific job in mind for you, but that's all we knew."

Wiseman blinked his ebony eyes thoughtfully. "Something about high levels of radiation and a contingency system." Danse nodded, his suspicions confirmed. Wiseman went on. "They mentioned something about a terminal, and an A.I, too, but that's all I remember. I was too scared out of my wits to really pay attention to what they were saying."

"Must have needed you to use as mules through the radiation," Hancock murmured. "I gotta wonder how many Ghouls they've taken from the Commonwealth. They didn't mention any more being out there?"

Wiseman shrugged apologetically. "Not that I remember. I wish there was more I could tell you, and that I could somehow repay you for this. The Minutemen have our thanks."

"We didn't do it alone," Ilya mentioned softly, glancing at Danse, "the Brotherhood lent us a hand, and honestly I don't think we would have pulled through without them. They deserve your thanks just as much as the Minutemen." She caught a look of appreciation from Danse and returned him a small smile.

"Really?" Wiseman was overcome with a wash of surprise. Obviously he was too traumatized to have noticed the dozen power-armoured troopers patrolling the quarry. "Well that's something I thought I'd never live to hear. In that case," he centred his gratitude on Danse, "thank you. On behalf of us all. If there's anything we can do to repay you—even supplying you with half our seasonal crop, we'd be more than glad to. It's the least we can do."

Danse seemed uneasy at the praise, but then fell smoothly into his penchant for militant diplomacy, tone polite, no evidence of repulsion for the Ghoul. "Thank you, but that won't be necessary. Just witnessing your safe return to freedom is reward enough."

"I'm sure Proctor Teagan might think differently," Ilya mumbled tartly through tight lips. Danse only gave her a 'screw Teagan' shrug of the brow, to which she grinned in return. So the modesty wasn't just for show. She was proud of him.

Strong plodded in bearing a rickety cage of live specimens, unbothered as they hissed and flailed through the bars for freedom. He shoved it at the nearest armoured Brotherhood soldier. "Take it, bucket-head. For brainy human work. Could be good to eat, too. Roasting brings out flavour. Strong want leftovers."

The crew moved as one up the wending path to the apex of the site, their steps weighed, chatter almost nonexistent. Several Minutemen glided in to take away the traumatised Ghouls and guide them into the nearby metal shacks. Hancock and Deacon were helping Clay-Crawler haul his broken power armour up behind them all. Ilya hadn't yet told the young raider that he would be returned to Brotherhood custody, and was struggling with her internal warfare over whether or not she should even allow it to happen. On one hand, there was Clay-Crawler's right to freedom, and the other hand, the potential risk to his health and even life if the mutation he received from the specimen wasn't yet complete and took a turn for the worse. The Brotherhood claimed to want to monitor him for his own safety, but she knew it was more for their own benefits of study. Would they let him go free when they were done with him?

And then there was Danse to consider in all this. He had an obligation to follow his orders and see to it that Clay-Crawler was returned safely to the Prydwen, but Ilya knew it went even deeper than that for him. By doing this, it was a sort of atonement for his past regrets against the Brotherhood, due to her. If she took that away from him and refused to hand over the raider, it could splinter apart their already-fragile relationship all over again.

She was just too tired to think about all this right now.

"You doing okay, there, Blue?" Piper cooed at her side. "Or should I be calling you Red now?" she added, brushing at the dried blood on Ilya's vault suit, and then scoffing as it flaked away under her fingers. "Do I even want to know how this happened?"

Ilya attempted a smile. "Probably not. And Red, Blue, same diff. I'll be fine, once I've had a shower and a coffee." In truth, she felt like shit. Her entire body ached, her wounds were on fire, she was exhausted, hungry, thirsty, depressed, wracked with guilt, covered in blood and oil, and walking back up the quarry was draining what little energy she had left and was making her light-headed. She exhaled slowly to stave off the faint spell.

"By the looks of you, a weeks worth of sleep wouldn't hurt," Piper stated in gentle honesty. "That and a good hot meal."

"And a good, stiff drink," Cait barged in from behind them, flinging Ilya a secret wink. Piper didn't seem impressed.

When the group reached the apex of the quarry, they were greeted with an unexpected surprise. Star Paladin Groves stood a diligent sentinel, her armour plating casting a reflective sheen in its pristine condition. At her side, was Elder Maxson, stood with feet widely spaced, hands behind his back, chin lowered to regard them with shadowed gaze, every aspect of him a daunting presence. But he had actually dragged his haughty ass down from his kingdom in the sky, either to heed Ilya's temperamental demand that he come to her in person for her to cooperate, or just to spite her for going AWOL and keeping him in the dark about her leadership of the Minutemen. His cold eyes settled on Ilya, and she decided it was the latter.

"Elder Maxson, sir!" Danse was instantly at attention, even attempting his Brotherhood salute while holding Dogmeat's corpse in his one arm.

"At ease, Danse," Maxson held up a dismissive hand. "A very commendable success here. And I see you found our escaped raider in the process. Well done." Under Maxson's sharp gaze, Clay-Crawler wilted.

Danse retook Dogmeat in both arms. "Thank you, sir. He was found deeper in the quarry, held prisoner by the raiders." Ilya's skin prickled at the lie and how steadily Danse delivered it. He was getting good at that...

Maxson's eyes swept from Danse to fall upon her again, piercing. "I'm sure he was." The prickling over her skin intensified. Oh, that was shady. Did he know the truth about Clay-Crawler's escape? She swallowed.

A chill wind swept through the lapse in dialogue between them all, the fur of Maxson's coat not the only thing ruffled by it. Tension charged the air like static. Someone in the back ranks swore under their breath at the awkwardness. Sounded like Deacon.

"I see you've been rather busy in your absence, Knight," Maxson snapped the tension, his penetrating glare like a dagger to her composure. "Or should I address you as _General_ , from here on out?"

The slight flick in his brow at the title gave her all the intel she needed on his verdict. He held no respect for the Minutemen. Usually, that would have kindled a fire in her, but exhaustion snuffed it out. "Please, Maxson. Can we do this later?" she breathed out. "I need your help. Dogmeat—my dog—he was killed in the quarry." She then gestured to Danse cradling the canine. The paladin gave his elder a grave look, putting his support on display. "But he can be revived by one of these specimens. We just don't know how. Senior Scribe Ketway or Neriah might be able to figure it out. Please." She was practically begging, but she couldn't care less at this point. Her ego was nothing in comparison to Dogmeat's life.

Elder Maxson, having not even flinched at her slip of proper address, regarded the limp canine that Danse held, then the paladin, then back to Ilya, taking his time to absorb her battered and frail state. Ilya felt on the brink of collapse while he considered, strength waning with each breath of wind.

"Fine. But you owe me your unbidden time for this, Knight. We have a great manner of things to discuss. Board the vertibird. We leave now." With that, he turned on his heel and marched for the awaiting vertibird, Groves in his wake.

Just like that. Without a word in protest, even for an animal. She could hardly believe his benevolence, so out of character. Ilya exhaled with a heady gratitude, and that was when the last of her endurance let her go. The ground reached up quickly to meet her, pillowy and encompassing, so kind it even took her in without a single piece of pain in welcome. She had made it. Everything was done. She could rest now.

The sky was so beautiful, a clear, crisp blue dappled with clouds of pure white. One might never know that a great war had once ended the world. She was drifting through it, sound and feeling muted, so Danse entering her awareness was otherworldly as he hovered above her. His lips were moving but no sound graced her. That furrowing was in his brow, and she wanted to tell him that she was alright, that everything would be alright now, he didn't need to worry. She wanted to smile at him, to speak to him, but she couldn't feel her lips, couldn't remember how to work them.

Suddenly, her environment shifted. The backdrop of the sky stretched down at her, or was she lifted up to it? Danse pulled her closer, against his metal chest, lifting up, moving, the clouds streaming overhead like heavenly pillows. Everything was so blissful. He looked down at her, his familiar face so pleasant to her eye, but he was worried. But she was smiling, wasn't she? Why couldn't she smile? She just wanted him to know she was alright.

The edges of her vision undulated, blurring her view of him. _No._ She didn't want to lose him. _Don't go. Don't leave me._ His chestnut eyes held her softly, never leaving her as everything grew heavy, dim, hazy. Her head fell against his chest. All was dark. The rhythm of his motion was her lullaby.

 _Please don't leave me again..._

* * *

 **-LadyNightShade -** Thanks! ^.^ I'm glad it didn't scare you away lol


	30. Damaged Soldiers

**Chapter 30: Damaged Soldiers**

* * *

 _The darkness was a thing, a consciousness that slipped beneath her skin to unravel her sanity. She was within a void,_ her _void, lost to her own depths as it all billowed upon her._

 _"_ _You can't escape it."_

 _But she made an attempt, raiding her void for that escape, for rifts of light that might offer it to her. Instead, she found only pain. Sharp impacts like nails to her feet, fingernails shredded off, harrowing slices to her flesh, then, the stabbing, over and over, explosions in her gut that no amount of cries could express. They pulsed throughout her entire body. Before they could consume her, her throat was slashed by a jagged edge, and she was gagging on blood, drowning in herself. Then there was a horrid wrenching as her throat was torn out._

 _Just as she had done to Doom-Guy. In a flash, she saw his monstrous face, the blood warpaint, the decayed teeth, the fangs, the scars, the cruel eyes that could see right into her soul and know her deepest madness. He was laughing. She was screaming. He was dead. She was drowning._

 _"_ _It will hunt you no matter where you hide."_

 _It was the silhouette, the same one she had seen in the quarry, of a shadowed man. His voice was familiar yet amorphous. At first, she thought it to be Doom-Guy's, weaved with his slimy tones, but then she recognised that it was just that—only weaved with his voice but not wholly his._

 _"_ _You'll never escape it."_

 _Blood came next. A sea of it. The world was devoured by it, a megalithic sphere of blood hovering in space. People floundered in waves, crying out for mercy. She was one of them._

 _Blood was suddenly shrivelled into sand, molten skies lapping up the moisture with heat and sculpting the landscape into dry, rolling dunes. The people of the world were swallowed whole by the land like quicksand, cries smothered, straining hands the last glimpses of them she saw before the sand took them. She was alone in the red desert, painted in blood that dripped from her skin and to the sand, hissing away in the heat to quench the thirst of the air._

 _"_ _It's hunting you out here."_

 _She ran as the skies were cast aflame, burning up her air, chasing her across the endless plains of wasted earth. It was gaining, growing in potency with each stride she took. She knew there was no escape, so why did she run?_

 _"_ _It will never stop hunting you. Just let it catch you. Let it take away the pain. Let it consume you wholly."_

 _So she listened to the silhouette's distorted voice. She just stopped running. She let the radiation catch her._

* * *

Climbing up the Prydwen's rungs in power armour with an unconscious woman draped over his shoulder was an awkward and risky task, but Danse managed to achieve success without failing in the multiple ways his mind imagined. He secretly breathed a sigh of relief, and carefully lowered Harper down from his shoulder-guard and back into his arms, glimpsing her slack and grubby face before following Elder Maxson into the infirmary.

"Knight-Captain Cade," Elder Maxson summoned upon entering the small confines of the room, "It's Knight Harper. She collapsed spontaneously."

Cade ceased reviewing his terminal and came out from behind his bench, eyes trailing over Harper's slack form. "Alright, let's get her on the cot and I'll take a look."

Danse nodded and sidestepped his width through the doorway, Elder Maxson shifting aside to allow him past. When he gently lowered Harper onto the infirmary cot, her face drew his eye again like a magnet. Christ, she was a feeble thing. Beneath the smears of blood, dust, and oil, there was a ghostly white pallor to her skin. Darkness eclipsed her eyes where faint lines seemed more apparent than usual. Her cheeks were a little sunken, giving her bone structure sharper angles. Her lips were dry and wan, lacking their familiar fullness, and a small crack at the corner was encrusted with dried blood.

Her body took the effect to another level. She was slight, frail, nearing on as bony as that little brat of a raider. Lying flat like that, her hip bones protruded sharply through the fabric of her vault suit, and he wouldn't be surprised if her ribs were as clearly defined through her skin. Faded, ashen, she was a brittle sketch of what she once was.

Reluctant, Danse stepped back slowly to allow Cade access to her, overcome with a sudden shame. He should have tried harder to talk her out of going down into that quarry. The moment he saw her again after dropping down from the vertibird, he had been stunned by her physical decline, almost disgusted. He had seen how sickly she had become in his absence, yet he allowed her to push herself beyond her limits. And now look at her. He had been her superior, her mentor through the ideals and standards of the Brotherhood, an example to empower her through the grim reality of the Wastes, but he obviously failed in his charge. This was his fault.

Just like the deaths in his recon team were because he made the wrong calls; Knight Pascal's condition because he botched up that entire op by selecting a high profile target; the soldiers in the vertibird that Harper was forced to shoot down because he allowed that heist to go ahead; Dogmeat because he wasn't strict enough with that damned Clay-Crawler. And Cutler... that death was directly by his hand.

What if _she_ died because of his negligence?

Cade was examining Harper, checking her pupils, her pulse rate, hooking her up to the machines for monitoring, wiping down her arm to prick a needle into her vein and attach an I.V. He was muttering away as he worked, explaining her status. Elder Maxson was strolling forward, asking questions and giving orders, but Danse was only half there with them.

The other half was remembering the sinking feeling of dread and denial, of guilt and grief at each death that had occurred due to his failings. Standing there looking at Harper brought it all back to the surface, and it was swallowing him whole. He had tried so hard to push it down and secure it, and he had been doing so well, damn it. But it always came back with a vengeance, the blame, the insecurity, all their faces. They were accusing him. Always accusing him.

At once, he recognised it. The quickening of his heartbeat, of his breath, of his adrenaline. A chill crept over his body even within the warm enclosure of his suit. His mind fogged up and narrowed in on what was happening to his body. His extremities began to feel distant, then the tingles came on. No. Push it back. Deep breaths. Steady. Steady.

But the more he tried to fight it off, the more it leeched off the attention he gave it, and within mere seconds he knew it had gone beyond his ability to control it. His heart was now a staccato in his chest and it was loud in his ears, breaking up his rapid airflow with its sheer vibrations.

Oh hell. Oh damn it all. He couldn't look at her like that any longer. He had to get out, get out now. "Excuse me," Danse managed in a husk of a voice, flying from the infirmary as fast as his armour would allow.

His quarters. He just needed to reach his quarters. But the hallway seemed to stretch out before his eye, lengthening the distance he had to travel. His legs within the armour went limp and his vision was overcast with a grainy film as he panted for air. Everything became an obstacle, and it took everything he had not to simply bound across the hall at full speed and draw attention to himself.

But finally, blissfully, he was inside his quarters. He slammed the bulkhead behind him probably a little too forcefully, ceased to care, and hurriedly cracked his armour. He slipped on the footrests in his panicked haste and stumbled back into the door, back catching his fall with a loud bang, but again, he ceased to care. All he cared about was the painful thumping in his chest and his shortening breath, wheezing in his struggle for air.

As the world began to swerve, Danse found refuge in the wall and pressed his forehead into its cool steel, squeezing his eyes shut, focusing on levelling out his breathing.

Hyperventilating, have to slow it down. Taking in too much oxygen. Slow it down. Slow it down. Big breaths. That's it. That's it. Just breathe. Breathe. Think of her. Think of her, alive and well. When she smiles. When she jokes around. When she picks on you for a laugh. When she makes you laugh. When she's Ilya.

As his heart rate began to drop off and his breathing stabilized, the chill let him go like a receding mist, taking the pinpricks away with it. He sighed heavily into the metal, still taking in gulps of fresh oxygen as he slid down onto his knees. He was saturated in cold sweat, quaking all over, and his chest ached with each pump his heart laboured out, but at least he could breathe. After a moment of recovery, he thumped his head lightly into the wall and cringed at himself. He had never had a full-blown panic attack quite like that. It had always been just a brief moment of anxiety accompanied by a hot sweat and loss of concentration. He had thought the nightmares were his last remaining bane, that the flashbacks and panic attacks had finally subsided.

Working with Harper had been good for him, a welcome distraction, something else to focus on other than his own insecurities. But then he started to grow attached to her, to care too much, and it had conflicted with him both professionally and personally. Now she was in _there_ , like _that_ , and he couldn't bear the thought of losing her like everyone else who had depended on him.

God damn it. He almost bashed his fist into the wall, but caught his momentum at the last inch. He had thought that distancing himself from her would make things easier, that he could get a decent hold of himself again and take stock, but it had just made everything worse. For both of them.

Lost in a sea of doubt, Danse remained there for a long while, bolstering himself to go back in there and brave reality with her. He didn't know what he wanted for their future relationship, but right now, he knew where he wanted to be.

* * *

Ilya was drifting, her inertia an alien, belying thing of disorientation. She imagined that it must be like this in zero gravity, to be caught out in a sea devoid of force, yet to feel lost in the vertigo of herself.

She felt a shadow. She was unaware that she could even feel shadows, that it was a possible thing, but she felt _something_ akin to a shadow. A whisper in air density. A warmth.

Lashes fractured apart to let in light, a cold stream of it that burned to the back of her skull. She felt the muscles of her face warp in reflex, but she strained again to divide her eyelids and discern her surroundings. The overhead light flared momentarily before her retinas adapted. There was barren steel, and then Danse.

He was blurred, but she knew it was him by the way he held himself—posture a little rigid, limbs strict in their set, as if constantly tensed for battle. _He_ was the warmth she had felt. He was propped in a chair beside her cot, leaning forward with elbows on knees, hands up to his mouth in balled deliberation. His face was too obscured, but she knew that furrow was on his brow.

He _hadn't_ left her. He had stayed with her. She felt warmth swell in her chest.

Ilya pushed down a heavy swallow. "Danse?" It snagged in her throat and came out as a hoarse groan.

At once, he was up and right at her side. His face was clear to her now, so marred by concern yet she never wanted to forget a single detail for fear of never seeing him again. Her name danced on his lips, along with other words of concern, then he lifted his head and called to someone outside her radius of awareness. A shadow befell her from her opposite side, but all she was focused on was Danse, and the enveloping solace of his hand holding hers.

Smiling, she lapsed back into unconsciousness.

* * *

Something was sharp.

"There. That should help flush her system and kick-start her immunity."

Who was that? The voice was warm, cordial. Ilya strained for consciousness again. The sharpness transpired into pinpricks throughout her body. She felt the tips of her limbs flood with sensation.

A tense sigh. "How long has this been going on... We shouldn't have missed this, Knight-Captain. _I_ shouldn't have missed this. In fact, I should have expected it." It was spoken gruffly. This voice had a familiar mild, husky quality to it, but she couldn't quite place it.

"This is nobody's fault, Elder, least of all yours. I myself missed it, and I've treated her wounds on several occasions."

Ah, Maxson, with Knight-Captain Cade. The Prydwen. She was on the Prydwen.

"I want her transferred to a private unit," Maxson demanded evenly. "Her situation is too sensitive to be discussed out in the open like this, I don't want anything being overheard."

Wait, what situation?

"Of course, Elder," Cade obeyed without a hitch. "But it will be difficult for me to keep her closely monitored when I have to tend to patients in the infirmary, as well."

"You can arrange for someone to take your place here." Stern. Unsparing. "And you will refrain from mentioning this to Danse. He has resigned from his charge and her condition no longer concerns him."

Condition... Oh god, the chems.

"Yes, Elder. Patient confidentiality will be held to standard. Should I refer her on to our psychiatric team?"

"Not yet. I want to talk to her first, hear what she has to say for herself."

But Dogmeat. Clay-Crawler. Danse?

With sluggish effort, Ilya strained to muster something, anything. She felt her toes curling tightly, fingers folding in to her palm, trying to connect with the skin there and dig in. Maybe pain would rouse her. Her tongue was a heavy lump in her mouth, throat sheathed in numbness.

"Send for me if there are any changes, Knight-Captain."

Boots were receding on the deck. Maxson was leaving. She had to do something. Her eyes cracked a little and she caught a shadow of movement, shooting out her hand to snatch it by the wrist. The boots halted their gait, and for a moment, all was silent. Ilya's vision cleared to see Maxson staring down at her, wide-eyed, stunned, an expression she had never witnessed him wearing before. It was then that she realised it hadn't been his wrist she had caught, but his hand. They both stared at their conjoined hands, as if comprehending the connection, then Ilya let him go, awkwardly slithering her hand back over the medical sheets covering her.

"Dogmeat," she croaked.

Maxson took a moment to blink, then straightened his stance, donning his stony air again. "Your dog is in the biology wing, undergoing experimentation, which has yet to yield results." He glanced at Cade as the man came over to address Ilya.

"Welcome back, Knight. How are you feeling?" He was much more accommodating, even offering her a sympathetic smile.

"Fine." She strove to sit upright. "Where's Clay-Crawler? What have you done with him?"

Maxson snapped on an offended glare. "Relax. He hasn't been harmed. We've placed him in quarantine for the time being. He was surprisingly compliant."

That's Clay-Crawler for you, Ilya thought. He couldn't _not_ act like a slave to save himself.

"At any rate, I think you should be more concerned for yourself, right now," Maxson extended, turning a fresh glower upon her. "Knight-Captain Cade did some blood work while you slumbered. The chems in your system were hard to miss."

Ilya tried not to fidget in her exposure, Maxson's hot glare overpowering her as she broke eye contact. A fleeting glance Cade's way gave her nothing but his professional neutralism, and she felt a flare of anger that he had taken her bloods without her consent. How great of an offence was her chem use? Remembering that the Brotherhood favoured execution over the waste of resources on imprisonment, a sudden panic wriggled in her gut.

"Where's Danse?"

Maxson exhaled a knowing sigh through his nostrils. "I sent him out due to patient confidentiality. He was rather reluctant to leave your side, even to the point where I had to order him from the infirmary. In all my years of knowing him, Paladin Danse rarely acts on his emotions; like many, he has built up a certain immunity in favour of self-preservation. Such is the way of so dedicated a soldier. As I understood it, he had been set on resigning his mentorship. It seems the two of you have settled your differences, then?"

Ilya didn't miss his underlying disapproval of her being a bad influence on his favoured paladin. It reminded her of how dangerous the bond was between her and Danse when it came to Maxson. Did the elder see her as a threat to Danse's loyalty? If so, how far would he go to ensure the threat was subdued? "On some level," she eventually answered Maxson, unable to hide the wistful tone to her voice. "He still thought that we shouldn't be working together anymore, though."

"That's his rightful decision," Maxson nodded, as if proud of Danse's professional distance. "He placed a lot of trust in you, Knight, and put his reputation on the line when sponsoring you through your initiation into the Brotherhood. Your insubordination and abandonment cast him in a very bad light."

"I know," Ilya swallowed, looking down and twiddling her fingers guiltily. _Just as well you don't know the real reason he's distancing himself from me._ Killing fellow brothers and sisters would definitely earn her a public execution. She was actually surprised Maxson hadn't mentioned to her how Clay-Crawler had been 'kidnapped by a Dark Blood infiltration.' Maybe he assumed Danse had informed her when they 'found Clay-Crawler down in the quarry as a prisoner.' Their dirty little secret gave her a slice of satisfaction at Maxson's expense. She never thought she would be the kind of woman to enjoy all this deception and power play... Maxson was so pompous it was hard not to enjoy it.

"Now," Maxson devoured her slice of satisfaction with that single word, "I would hear you explain yourself and these blood results, Knight Harper."

She stole another look at Cade, who was idly flicking through her files on a clipboard, before licking the drought from her lips. "The Med-X was unintentional, I had already taken a dose in the battle after I fell down the quarry, then the scribes gave me another dose after the battle was over, and I didn't think to stop them. Too much going on." Maxson's face remained fixed in a passive set. "The Jet, yeah, I overdid it. But it was only to get me through the fight," she lied, falling back on her sly ways. "I hadn't slept much the night before—too nervous. And the Med-X was slowing my reflexes. And then... Dogmeat. So yeah, things got on top of me and I went a little heavy on it. I'm not proud of it."

Maxson was still silent, calculating, but Cade gave a considering hum. "I couldn't help but notice your drop in weight, Harper. I would even go as far as to say you're underweight; this will, if it hasn't already, lead to muscle atrophy, chronic fatigue, hypotension, anemia, to name just a few. How you maintain your active lifestyle is a mystery to me... unless you supplement with chems to keep yourself going..."

 _I fucking hate doctors..._ Ilya eyeballed his shrewd look in return. Eventually, she unleashed a sigh and stared down at her hands again. They were pale, bony, webbed by veins and trembling—ghastly. Her eyes shifted to the I.V line in her arm and the nutrient bag hooked up beside the cot.

"Yes, you were severely dehydrated when Danse brought you in," Cade followed her stare and deciphered her thoughts. "Not to mention malnourished..." the doctor then added under his breath. "I also took the liberty of patching up your multiple wounds, but as for the internal bruising, only time and regular Stimpaks will heal it up, so I'm afraid you'll be a bit sore for a while. Anyone would have thought you'd been to hell and back by the state of you, Knight."

Suddenly, Ilya wanted to burst into tears. It all seemed more real, more hopeless from the starkness of an infirmary cot. Living like this, on the go every day, throwing herself headfirst into every chance at distraction and danger to escape the ruin of her life, neglecting herself, pushing for her goals at the expense of herself and others, it was killing her. But she hadn't wanted to accept what she was doing, didn't want to sit and stare her demons in the face and tell them she knew them. They petrified her. What if they spoke back to her, told her they knew her better than she knew them? Or worse, that they knew her better than she knew herself? She wanted them gone but didn't want to face them, trapped in an endless cycle of procrastination and false hope.

 _Damn it, don't cry in front of them._ Her eyes were stinging from the pressure of tears, and staring at her hands in the cold silence only made it more real that she was alone in her insanity. _Damn it._ Her hands slowly tensed into the sheets. _Don't let it use you. Use_ it. _Craft it into anger. I can use anger._ Her hands were fists, then they uncurled and flowed over the sheets, and she met Maxson's eyes.

"Things have been tough. I haven't coped." He stared back wordlessly, unfeeling, and it was impossible to bare her soul to such eyes, so she picked something meaningless to focus on—Cade's terminal—and continued. "The whole reason I joined up with the military back in the past was to give myself purpose, do something with my life that made me feel like I was making a difference. I wanted to protect people, fight for those who couldn't fight themselves. The typical volunteer soldier... But the military wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Instead, I found myself thrown into battles over things that shouldn't have men and women killing themselves over. Sometimes we didn't even know _what_ we were fighting for, or who. It's hard to find meaning in yourself when you're blindly fighting someone else's war." She paused as she dissected every detail of the terminal, refusing to meet Maxson's eyes again in fears she would find only apathy in them. She moistened her dry mouth and went on again. "But out here, I pick my own battles, and I always know what I'm fighting for. I can finally make a difference the way I want to. So when shit happened... losing my husband and my son, seeing the world end, all those people dying, and living with the guilt of surviving it... I guess I buried myself in what I could do out here, in every opportunity I could get my hands on to make a difference. I got lost in it, and I didn't want to face my own world anymore..."

Maxson and Cade stood motionless in her silence, but Ilya didn't mind, she was still digesting her own words and coming to terms with her own admission. It felt liberating to get that off her chest, and it was as much a confession to the two men as it was to herself.

To her surprise, it was Maxson, not Cade, who was the first to speak again. "I can't say I can relate to being forced over two hundred years into the future, but I can say I know what it's like to lose those that you held most dearly, and to lose your grasp on reality in ambitions greater than yourself." His voice was mellow, careful, borderline gentle. Ilya braved lifting her eyes to him and was seized by the sincere ones looking back. She had seen him like that only once before, when they had first met on the Prydwen's bridge, and he had told her that he cared for the Commonwealth and its people. She hadn't believed him then. Now, she wasn't sure what she believed about him anymore.

He took her silence as clearance to go on. "I empathise with your plight, Harper. Being in a position of leadership always comes with its cons and hardships, and more often than not, you find yourself standing alone, despite the army at your back. You're expected to lead by example, to be a pillar of fortitude amongst a sea of anarchy, and the moment your allies smell weakness, is the moment you've outgrown your use."

Ilya had no idea his position in the Brotherhood was so... delicate. No wonder he was his severe self, if there was that much pressure to uphold confidence in his leadership. Twenty years old, and the weight of the world on his shoulders. It wasn't right, wasn't fair. "I don't think the Minutemen are as dog-eat-dog as the Brotherhood," she commented, softening it with a sympathetic smile.

Maxson nodded stiffly, untouched by her sympathy. "The trials of time may change that. The Minutemen are a young uprising, unconditioned by hierarchies of blood and custom. You're in a unique position to influence how the Minutemen will evolve throughout the future, well beyond your time, whether they will stay true to their roots to aid the unfortunate, or grow an introverted purpose. But know, that you can't remain in a position to aid others if you first can't aid yourself."

He really was wise beyond his years. Ilya found herself swayed by his charismatic effect, taking onboard his advice despite altogether being indifferent about her role with the Minutemen. Maybe the leadership was growing on her, but she still had her own personal ambitions to strive for, such as her son's fate, and the wellbeing of the people she cared for. Like Danse.

"I know, you're right," she nodded her agreement, though still wondering if that dark presence inside her would allow his advice to take priority over it. Either way, she would give it her best shot. "Thank you... Elder." She complimented the title with a small, teasing grin, and Maxson even looked a little surprised. His lips threatened a smile for the briefest of moments, before he immediately curbed it.

"You're welcome, Knight. Now, there's still a lot we have yet to discuss regarding our collaborative efforts against the raider uprising, but there will be a time and place for that once you've regained your strength. However, I would ask of you as to your intentions within the Brotherhood, whether or not you plan to continue in our service and aid our fight against the Institute? You're still an invaluable asset to us, and because of that, I'm willing to overlook your desertion and grant you full reinstatement. Though don't take that as lenience. My tolerance has its limit."

His sudden donning of professionalism was jarring, and it reminded Ilya just how alike he and Danse were when it came to dealing with personal situations. "I, uh... I'm gonna need some more time to think on that." She felt like an ungrateful cow for leaving him hanging, when he had seen to it that she received the treatment she needed, and that Dogmeat got his chance at revival. Still, all that could have just been him stacking up favours for his own agenda. Her opinion of him was up in the air right now. "But I appreciate your offer."

There was an inkling of disappointment that he either didn't care to hide, or slipped up in concealing. "Of course, I understand your hesitation. We haven't exactly seen eye-to-eye in many things as of late, but I hope that can change for the near future."

"I hope so too." She honestly didn't think they would ever see eye-to-eye, but if they could somehow manage to balance each other out and put the energy of their heated disagreements into bettering the Commonwealth, then she was willing to make a go of it. Even if the role of leadership jaded her.

He nodded at the finalisation of the matter, looking somewhat satisfied, and Ilya waited a moment for the dust to settle. "...May I be dismissed from the infirmary, Elder?" She wasn't sure if she needed to address him by his title while she wasn't officially a member of the Brotherhood, but she figured it was safest.

Cade made a noise to express his denial, but Maxson didn't need the advice. "In case it's slipped your memory, you collapsed only hours ago due to extreme exhaustion and malnutrition. You will remain in the infirmary, at least until you've had a decent meal."

"I only want to see Dogmeat," she explained carefully. "Please."

"Not until you've had something to eat," he pressed, shooting her a look of rebuke before angling his head Cade's way. "Knight-Captain, I trust you can keep her confined to this cot until she agrees to eat something. Spoon-feed her, if necessary." Ilya would have laughed at that added order, if she weren't so eager to check on Dogmeat. Cade made a huffing chuckle and nodded.

"I'm sure that won't be necessary, sir, but if it comes to that, then I'll see to it that she walks out of here a full five kilograms heavier."

For that, Ilya pinned him with a mock look that said 'just try it.' He parried with a look that said 'bring it on.'

Maxson caught their silent language and retained a stale expression. "I take my leave."

After he was gone, Ilya sighed in defeat and sank back into the pillow of her cot, staring up at the bland ceiling of steel. "I don't get him. At all."

Cade didn't seem surprised by her comment, smiling into his clipboard as he strolled to her bedside. "Perhaps that's the point. An Elder needs to be transparent in his ideals, but too transparent, and, well, that's just not clever. Elder Maxson is a very clever man, and he has you all figured out, Knight."

If it weren't for his playful tone, Ilya would have thought he was warning her against doing anything stupid. Maybe, in his own way, he was. She humoured him anyway. "That my official warning not to try anything, doc?"

He only gave another smile, still penning down on the clipboard. Ilya liked Cade, he was a breath of warm, fresh air aboard a ship overrun with a highly strung sausage-fest of indoctrinated wind-up toy soldiers. He was still wound firmly around Maxson's finger, just more lax about it.

"Thanks for patching me up," Ilya offered after a moment of comfortable silence. "And for flushing my system..."

Cade lifted her a gracious look. "Don't mention it, soldier. You've been through a lot, so don't be too hard on yourself for turning to chems. Just don't make a habit of it."

How to ask if the Addictol he had given her would have removed her cravings as well as the chems in her system, without giving away that she was addicted?

Before she could devise a strategy, she was distracted by Danse rounding the corner, a tray in hand piled high with steaming food. His free fist was set to rap against the wall for permission to enter, but upon seeing Ilya awake and staring, he checked the motion and instead sent a gladdened smile her way. He was still plastered in the Dark Blood—as was she—his uniform thoroughly stained, but his face showed evidence of being wiped at by a cloth as clean paths were smeared over it. His hair was a stiff mass that a hand had obviously run through and scruffily slicked it back. Somehow, though, he was still ruggedly appealing.

"Hey," she greeted fondly, giving a timid smile in return. She couldn't help but marvel at the dedicated structure of his build that the uniform clearly defined.

"Soldier," he returned just as fondly, giving a small incline of the head. "It's good to see you awake. How do you feel?"

"Rested," she replied, before grinning again, "and hungry."

Danse grinned back through a chuckle and approached, offering her the tray of food. It was some type of thick brown sludge riddled with soggy chunks of vegetables. She widened her eyes at the sheer amount, so he explained. "Maxson said to make sure you ate enough for a small army..." When she still hadn't taken the tray from him, not sure whether to laugh or not, he added, "It isn't bad... Well, as long as you don't smell it before you eat it."

That was it, she laughed, relieving him of the tray and setting it down in her lap. She was hungry enough to eat raw radstag, but she was more interested in him, however, watching as he lowered himself into the chair nearby. "What, no Dandy Boy Apples for dessert?"

Another chuckle, slightly abashed. "I'm afraid the Squires cleaned out the day's stock before I could get my hands on any."

Ilya made a sound of hard luck. "Gotta be quicker next time, then."

"Squires are fast creatures, with an insatiable hunger for sweets. Some light reconnaissance may be required to ensure mission success."

"Operation: Apple Run is a go!"

They both giggled helplessly, basking in the company of each other despite current circumstances. Cade had wandered back over to his terminal to give them space, shaking his head at their childish antics. Their laughter died away, but they got caught in each other for a moment longer, smiles lingering before they broke eye contact awkwardly to focus elsewhere.

"You had me worried when you just collapsed like that," Danse spoke more soberly, filtering the infirmary with a sudden grave air. Ilya knew it had been coming, yet she kneaded her fingers with discomfort, all the same. They had a way of breaking the ice with silliness and banter before getting down to the serious stuff.

"I'm know. I'm sorry," she offered weakly, not sure how to defend herself yet placate him simultaneously. Then she shrugged. "Guess I learnt my lesson," a gesture to her confinement to the cot showed her point. "I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. Especially if it means I won't have to deal with Maxson organising my rations." The pile of diarrhea-looking food received a stab from her fork.

Her attempt to keep the mood light was either lost on Danse, or denied. He eyed her with a ghost of a crease in his forehead, and it was clear he wanted to say more, something of a personal nature, but was keeping it to himself. Maybe because Cade was in the room and covertly eavesdropping. Once she had finally gotten him to loosen up around her, he still never felt at ease expressing his emotions with her while others were around to hear it. But she knew Danse, and she knew that when something was troubling him, he would eventually act on it before long. Ilya mentally prepared herself to be hunted down by him sometime in the near future to grill her in privacy.

"Eat your food," Danse said at length.

Ilya groaned and picked up the fork, eyeballing the sludge it took with it. Against his advice, she sniffed it, instantly reeling and pulling a sour face. He arched a cautioning brow, so she sighed and bolstered herself. "Shit." However, when she saturated her tastebuds and swallowed it down, she was pleasantly surprised. "Shit. It's actually not that bad."

"See. Told you."

She sent him a cheeky look before forking down more sludge. "What's it called?"

"The food? Well, officially, the mess cook calls it the 'nutritional mess,' but most of the grunts have taken to calling it..." he braced by clearing his throat, "...shitty mess."

Ilya nearly snorted the shitty mess out her nostrils with hilarity. Not only because of the dub, but because of the unconditioned sound of a cuss from Danse. He had obviously despised the taste of it on his tongue, too. The helpless look on his face under her amusement made it slightly adorable, to add to the effect.

"I'm sorry," she eventually added between breaks of sniggers, wiping at her mouth. "I just never thought I'd live to hear you swear."

He couldn't help but grin, her delight infectious. "I guess being around you and your crude mouth has finally taken effect."

She chuckled some more and continued eating. After some more messing around and shovelling down what her stomach could take, she caught Cade with pleading eyes. "Permission to leave the infirmary, Knight-Captain?"

He gave her a scrutinous eye before answering. "Mm, alright, Knight. But take it easy, just a quick visit to see your dog and then straight back here. Elder Maxson commissioned you a private unit, and you'll be restricted to recovery for at least three days." Upon her incredulous expression, he cut her off with, "By Elder Maxson's orders. Whether or not you're officially under his command, you're aboard his airship, and you'll do as he wishes. _No arguments._ "

Ilya tongued her molar in irritation. "Jesus, if I knew I'd have to put up with this shit, I never would have come here..."

"You didn't come here, you were brought, because you collapsed, and needed our help," Cade countered, folding his arms and canting a brow. "You'd do well to remember that."

"Yeah, whatever," she mumbled knowingly, sending him a smirk so he knew she was only being smart with him.

Cade shook his head and then regarded Danse. "Quite the attitude, this one. How you managed to keep her in check, Paladin, I haven't the slightest clue."

"I often wonder the same thing, Knight-Captain," Danse joined in. "Sometimes I'd find myself thinking it would just be easier to throw her overboard and be done with her."

Stunned by the gall of his tease, Ilya turned on him with a gaping mouth, mock offence. He was grinning proudly, mischievously, and it was so beautifully rare that she had to throw her pillow at him. The movement pulled at the stitching in the wound to her rib, but it was worth it. The pillow socked him in the face, and he rumbled softly in amusement.

"I said _take it easy_ ," Cade scolded. "Paladin, would you please get her out of my infirmary before she breaks something, most likely herself."

Danse, doing his best to smother his smile, stood. "Not a problem, Knight-Captain." He moved to her bedside, where she was slipping out her bloody legs from the sheets and preparing to stand. "Let's get you to Dogmeat."

He stood to her side and reached around to touch her far shoulder, his other hand hovering under her forearm in case she stumbled. Despite her best efforts, Ilya felt her pulse accelerate with his encompassing nearness, and hoped he wouldn't somehow know. She stood with his support, though with legs atremble.

"That's it," he commended quietly, and with his chest skimming her back, she actually felt the vibrations of his voice. She almost shivered with instant arousal, and gooseflesh assailed her skin.

Fuck. All he had to do was stand close and speak, and she was a puddle on the floor.

They made their way up-deck for the biology department, where a makeshift cage had been set up for Dogmeat's corpse, and a live specimen. The cage was not unlike that made for Neriah's mole-rat subjects, just more heavily reinforced with steel bars and barbed wire fencing.

Elder Maxson was standing vigil over the experiment, hands locked behind his back in iconic stance. He turned his head to regard their approach, face a practiced blank. "Paladin Danse. Knight Harper."

"Elder Maxson," they chorused simultaneously. While Danse received a respectful nod, Ilya got only a suspicious eye before he turned back to the scene at hand. _Yes, I ate my rations, you grouch._

The three observed as Senior Scribes Neriah and Ketway bickered about the technicalities of the experiment, gesturing in frustration from their clipboards, to the cage, to several trays laid out on a table filled with vials of liquid. Their lingo was lost on Ilya, so she settled her eyes on Dogmeat's limp body just out in the open like that, eyes empty. Grief pinched at her heart again, refreshed by the scant few hours of sleep she had achieved. The specimen they were trialling was ignoring Dogmeat and instead prowling back and forth along the cage fence, black beads for eyes unblinking as they zeroed in on potential prey.

How much longer would Dogmeat's body be viable for revival? Was it already too late?

Just as she thought that, Neriah sounded off with a hopeful, "Unless..." The woman plucked up one of the vials from the table, examined the red liquid within—probably blood—and then picked up what looked like a dart gun of sorts, slotting the vial in its chamber.

"Would you prefer I did it?" Ketway piped, nearing on condescending. "We may only get one chance at this."

Neriah glared and stepped ahead. "I can manage, thank you." In other words, fuck you. She propped the small barrel through the cage wiring, ignoring the attention of the specimen below, and took careful aim. Ilya felt sure everyone was holding their breath before she popped off the dart, sending it to prick into Dogmeat's head, near the base of the skull. Nobody moved. Neither did the specimen. For an agonising collection of seconds.

Ilya was biting at her knuckles, preparing to slump over in a chair and suffer through hours of waiting and hoping, but without warning, the specimen swivelled on its insectoid legs and took to the bait. It sprang on Dogmeat and latched itself to his head, sinewy tail winding around his throat to secure itself in place while its legs clawed in through his fur.

Smiles were unanimous, even from Maxson, though his was more of an impressed nature than relieved. Neriah shot Ketway a look that had his ego visibly chafing, before she spun to Ilya.

"Step one, complete. Now, all we need to do is monitor the progression and mutation, and keep our fingers and toes crossed. Don't worry, Knight. I think we'll get our heads around this without too much more strife." That was obviously for Ketway's benefit. "Dogmeat will be up and about again in no time."

"Thank you, Neriah," Ilya expressed, a little overcome with emotion. "And Ketway. I'll never forget this."

Maxson rotated to her and Danse once the scribes dug back into their work. "Congratulations. Here's hoping this will continue to yield results. I'm still expecting us to enter negotiations once this is dealt with and you've had ample time to recover. There's also another project in the works right now that I'll be needing both your assistance for. I can't discuss the details as it's still in the early stages, but I'll tell you that it's the reason I had you recruit Doctor Li."

Doctor Li's project intrigued Ilya, but all she really had room for right now was the ecstatic glee of Dogmeat's possible revival. She beamed at Maxson, and despite his cold approach to the celebratory moment, she was only filled with gratitude. "Thank you, Maxson. For helping with Dogmeat. You could have refused, and I wouldn't have blamed you after my behaviour, but you didn't and I'll never forget it. You don't know how much this means to me. I'm in your debt." Perhaps her gratitude had overflowed, because he missed a beat and was lost for words for just slightly longer than he should have.

Instead of responding to her open warmth, he pulled on a scowl for them both. "Now, the both of you, get yourselves cleaned up before you stink out the Prydwen's halls. I can barely stand the sight of you." He marched off in a snot, but Ilya and Danse only grinned at each other.

* * *

- ** _PTSD is something that hits quite close to home for me, not nearly as severe as what Danse experiences though (battle fatigue) so I had been both looking forward to and not looking forward to writing this. It was one of the things that drew me to Danse as a character in the first place (aside from him being hot AF and a manly badass in power armour :3 ) I kinda just thought he was a douche at first, lol. So I really wanted to dig in and capture what this feels like, and in a way, Danse's personal story arc will be personal for me too. This whole fanfic is personal for me, really. I'm looking forward to more things to come and I hope you are too. Thanks to everyone who has stuck around :)_**

 ** _Lexic - Thanks for your uplifting review, it really meant a lot and it brightened my day! It makes me beyond happy to hear that reading this brightens yours :)_**

 ** _P.S - The Dandy Boy Apples were for Bianca ;) Thank you so much for your lovely reviews, you're so kind and I love reading them!_**


	31. Birds of a Feather

**Chapter 31: Birds of a Feather**

* * *

Showering once proved inadequate to rid him of the stink and stain that clung to his skin, so he risked overusing his weekly allocated shower-time for another round. Danse pressed both hands against the cubical wall and leaned his weight in as he let the water beat down on him, staring at the oily blood it washed away. Watching it swirl the drain was numbingly simple, almost therapeutic. He sighed. So much had occurred in one day that his mind was lagging in processing it all.

 _Ilya._

He had taken great pains in steeling himself against the inevitability of seeing her again, even after deploying from the vertibird over the quarry in order to save her life from those specimens, he had avoided clashing eyes with her face.

But in the end, it had been futile. As he had known all along.

 _Her face._ It had been like the sun to his gloom. And her eyes, those sapphires, radiant stars to split his mantle asunder. It was as if he hadn't seen her in years.

Damn it all. No matter how he kept himself occupied, he couldn't get her out of his head. Couldn't stop thinking of the way she had slipped her small, warm hand up the back of his neck while the world fell down around them. The way she had looked into his eyes, a deep need there that had thundered into his heart. What he had nearly done next still haunted him now. He had meant to _kiss_ her. Harper. His former charge and subordinate soldier. It was wrong on so many levels, an indecorous offence to his code... Yet she had been so close, so bold yet vulnerable, with that look in her eyes, and those lips...

Danse shuddered with the abrupt spike of arousal in his being. Then came the subsequent flare of guilt and disgust with himself. He felt dirty, impure. He couldn't be thinking of her in that way. Just what the hell was happening to him? He had never felt this way about a woman before, never felt so powerless, not even when those dreams wreaked havoc in the nights.

He remembered the running water and promptly switched off the flow, reaching a hand up to slick back his hair from dripping thick globules of water down his face. That headache was acquainting itself with his brain again, right at the base of his skull, a dull throbbing that was so familiar it was almost comforting.

Almost.

It seemed to come on whenever he so much as thought of his dreams and nightmares. It was more prevalent upon waking from them, however. It was as if his brain was not adapted to dreaming, like the very notion was a design flaw on nature's part, and his brain had evolved to dream of its own accord and the headaches were growing pains.

He shook his head and reached for a towel. Now, that was a foolish sentiment. And very hypochondriacal. There was nothing wrong with his brain. It was just stress. That was all. He was just stressed. Battle fatigue, his ass.

Unguarded, his mind wandered on to Ilya again while he dried himself off. He remembered the feel of her hands on his face, after he had knocked back that raider suicider and nearly cooked himself from the fallout in the process. Everything had been pain, the ringing, squealing in his ears from the blast, the aching in his muscles after the shockwave had shunted him down to his knees, the acute stabbing of his headache... and then there she was, holding him steady, bringing him back to life. Her emotion had stunned him. He had been impaired many times in battle, and she had nearly always been there to stab him with Stimpaks and haul him back to his feet, but she had never been so... intimate before.

What did that mean? Was it more than just attraction toward him for her, too? He wasn't _completely_ dense, contrary to popular banter both aboard the Prydwen and in Sanctuary. Harper wasn't as discreet with her nuances as she might think she was, and then there had been all the instances of blatant flirting on her part; she had always been a brazen woman. There was nothing wrong with a little bit of an attraction for a colleague, but as her superior officer, it was his job, his duty, to refrain from encouraging her and to keep their interactions strictly professional.

But that was growing increasingly difficult.

Like when that raider scum had his blade flush to her throat, all he had wanted to do was vaporise him into motes of nothingness and hold her safely in his arms, never letting harm come to her again. But Harper was the type of woman that went out actively seeking situations that put her at threat of harm; it was her profession, as it was his. Their job had them at risk nearly every single day, and each time her life hung in the balance, dependent on his proficiency as her teammate, he found himself viewing things in a new perspective as to their relationship, and what she meant to him.

It wasn't just with her, it was like that for all his teammates and colleagues—it was just the nature of the job in the field. It was why he preferred to distance himself from others, to put a dampener on forming too-personal a bond. Ever since Cutler. But Harper was different. Harper was... Ilya.

Wrapping the towel around his hips, Danse studied himself in the vanity mirror, peering in disapproval at his weathered skin and various scars, at the tired depth encircling his eyes, at the burst capillaries in the whites of those eyes. The past week had really grated on him, and his exterior was only a glimpse into how it had worn at his interior. With a ragged sigh, he grabbed his pre-war razor and worked at maintaining the length of his facial hair. There were a few unappealing scars under there that he liked to cover.

He wondered what she was doing right now, in her private medical unit under Cade's watchful eye... She's probably bored to insanity, playing those wasteful holotape games on her Pip-Boy and growling at her misfortune or poor skills, with that endearing look of ferocity on her face over so little and pointless a thing.

Quit it, he chastised himself. He had to stop letting his mind wander to her like that. At any rate, Ilya's state of mind should be his foremost concern right now, and something was definitely _wrong_ with her. It was something more than her workaholic attitude and self-neglect. Something more, even, than her depression over her husband and son, though it may all stem from that. It was something... deeper, darker. Something that frightened the hell out of him. _She_ frightened him.

So yes, her state should take priority here, and definitely not his inappropriate infatuation with her. Because that's all it was, and that's all it was ever going to be, damn it. He let himself get too soft on her before, and people died for it. He wouldn't let his selfishness take priority over the Brotherhood ever again. Especially if he was to remain an honourable example to his brothers and sisters.

Determined, Paladin Danse dressed himself in a clean jumpsuit uniform, his officer's issue detailed in black and deep olive green, and then shrugged on a brown bomber jacket, tugging up the collar for comfort before sweeping out from the officer's showers. The perk of brushing up at noon was having the entirety of the shower cubicals to himself.

The march through the officer's quarters was as it usually was, his introverted reverie broken by a swath of admiring faces and proud, informal salutes paired with nods or smirks, and the occasional _sir,_ or, _Paladin._ Sometimes, if he was lucky, he would even get the _Paladin, sir._ Sometimes, he glowed with equal pride and camaraderie for his brothers and sisters. Today, however, he pined for some solitude and an ice cold beer, with the opportunity to digest the day's events and prevent himself from finally hitting the sack with head still reeling from the tumult of it all.

Not quite yet, he reminded himself. Elder Maxson had sent for him, and it was of the hour, as of four minutes ago...

It was unlike him to be late. Hopefully Maxson would let it slide, or not even notice... who was he kidding? Maxson was just as meticulous as he himself was.

The elder stood his customary vigil over the Commonwealth from the observation bridge, leaning his weight into the railing encircling the windows. What occurred inside his head while he stood in here for hours on end, Danse had no clue. Such an astute mind must take quite the deep deliberation.

Upon his entrance, Danse locked his hands to the small of his back and stood at attention. "Elder Maxson."

Maxson remained. "Paladin..."

Danse stood expectantly, but when only silence met his expectation, he darted his eyes across the bridge with uncertainty, then went in for another prompt. "You sent for me, Elder?"

"Yes," Maxson was roused, lifting his weight from the railing to turn and face the paladin. "Apologies, my mind was occupied." He seemed distracted, detached. It was unlike him in such times, unto the breach of war on two frontiers. Usually, Elder Maxson was a great zenith to what it meant to be a brother of steel, immune to all that would harm or distract him from his duty and morals. That's exactly what he was, Danse decided in his mind; The Zenith of Steel.

So the fact of what he was witnessing in Maxson right here and now made Danse nervous.

"Is everything alright, Elder?" Danse ventured carefully, remembering the younger man's tendency to bottle up and don a mask when others so much as sniffed a sign of weakness—of humanity. Danse had learned that lesson quickly, during a certain mishap adventure with the elder.

As anticipated, Maxson donned that mask and came to a firm stance before his paladin, chin slightly lifted. "Just fine, thank you, Paladin. I summoned you here so that we may discuss the progress of Liberty Prime's recommission. You'll recall I mentioned earlier that I would be needing your assistance, as well as Harper's, should she decide to enter active duty again upon her recovery. With your request to be separated, I'm aware this complicates things." Danse fought the urge to shift his weight with discomfort. "Which is why you'll each be assigned separate tasks in Prime's reconstruction."

Against his better judgment, Danse cut in. "That won't be necessary, sir. We... had some time to talk, or more, I've had time to properly think things over. While I still have my reservations about being her mentor through the Brotherhood's ideals again, I have no qualms about working with her on the field, even as her commanding officer. Neither of us have fixed squads or even units, so our joint assignment makes sense."

The subtle tilt of Maxson's head told Danse he was under scrutiny, so he held his own. Most of what he had just said was true... aside from his underlying agenda to keep Harper in his sights, an agenda that had made him speak out before his mind could even formulate a complete sentence.

Maxson saw right through him and extracted his agenda like taking candy from a baby. "You never could quite get the knack of a winning lie, could you, Danse?" His elder's shift into fond disappointment had Danse's brows rising in stunned silence, before averting his eyes and finally shifting his weight with that discomfort from earlier, effectively caught out.

"...I guess not, sir," he mumbled, clearing his throat into his fist. Did this mean that Maxson had seen through all his other previous lies? Dear god...

Maxson allowed a sigh. "Harper may have both undermined and blindsided you when she went AWOL under your command, but we both know she's no ordinary induction into the Brotherhood, and that she did what she did for a good cause; maybe not by the Brotherhood's morals, but by her own morals, and there were no repercussions for us as a result of her actions." He paused, jaw playing beneath his thick beard, as if working himself up to something. "And as much as the woman pains me at times, we need her. I think we can both agree that she's someone we'd rather have for us and not against us. Not just because of her link to the Institute, but because of who she is. She's ambitious, influential, ruthless, even, which is something I never thought I'd define her as."

The way Maxson defined her, it sounded very much like a definition of himself. Danse didn't know what to think of that.

"Her recent actions to rally an assault so quickly and effectively have proven she would be a very dangerous enemy, and a powerful ally."

Danse nodded his agreement. _Indeed._

Maxson shared his nod, knowingly. "I expected you to understand her reasoning and eventually wish to reform as a unit. While I personally wouldn't recommend you get involved so closely with her again for your own sake, professionally, it's your choice to make, and I won't stop you."

The elder lived up to his harsh criticism yet reasonable politics. Danse forced himself to steady his gaze and reciprocate Maxson's personal address. If only he knew the real reason the bridge had formed between himself and Harper. But if he ever found out she had shot that vertibird down, he would have her executed. No matter how hard he tried to stay clean and true to the Brotherhood since then, he was still deceiving them, still protecting Harper from his own people. When would it all settle? He was caught between two powerful figures of conflicting beliefs: The Brotherhood of Steel—his people, his home, his structure of purpose and honour, his life; and Ilya—his enigma of a woman who had changed his life from the moment their eyes met, and who gave him not only happiness and acceptance, but hope. Hope to be something more. A better him.

"I understand your concerns with her, Elder, and I thank you for your consideration, but I believe she won't cause furthermore trouble for us, especially after your willingness to help with Dogmeat—her dog," Danse rushed to clarify after the look on Maxson's face.

"A curious name, that," Maxson then murmured in thought.

"Mmh. I never _have_ gotten the story behind it..."

There was a moment where both men were equals, standing face-to-face with a shared curiosity in something so simple as a dog's name. They both recognised the simplicity of it and were brought to shrugs of ease and near-grins, an unspoken decision to drop the formalities.

Maxson— _Arthur_ was the first to give the mood its voice, rotating back to the railings and leaning into it once again, gesturing to the space beside him. "Off the record, how are you coping, Danse? It can't have been easy seeing Harper like that."

Danse took the opportunity presented to him and strode to the railings, leaning in at Arthur's side to regard the Commonwealth, the clouds gathering to drape heavily in the sky. He thought carefully about his response before airing it.

"It's never easy to see a team member injured or... suffering. But we all see it eventually, some more than others. It's a part of the job. Harper knew it. I knew it."

Arthur absorbed that, turned his head, eyed him. "If only it were that simple." Danse tried not to bristle with vulnerability, but Arthur was far too perceptive. Or perhaps he was just too readable... "Danse, you couldn't get yourself out of the infirmary fast enough after bringing her in. Now unless you had eaten something foul down in that quarry and were suddenly overcome with bodily evacuations, or you felt the overwhelming need to write up a mission report and have it on my desk at once—which we both know can't be true—then you're not doing anyone any favours by concealing your stress. I had a similar word with Harper. Must I really have to tell the both of you to better look after yourselves?"

There was faint humour beneath Arthur's hard-line, but Danse couldn't hold his critical gaze any longer, breaking off to stare through the bleak grey clouds, sharing in their weighted misery. The headache thumped anew as if summoned by his thoughts. "Stress seems so commonplace in our line of work. I admit there're times I forget it's possible to function without it." It was somewhat evasive, but Arthur allowed it, relenting with his acute stare and giving it back to the Commonwealth.

"You wouldn't be the only one."

It was an opening, whether Arthur had meant it to be or not, and Danse took it. "I can only imagine the amount of stress you must be under, as of late. With the Institute looming, and now this new raider uprising, our forces are on the verge of being stretched thin. It's only because of your brilliant tactical manoeuvring that we haven't been."

"Yet," Arthur rebuffed the praise, skirting Danse's intended angle. "I keep few secrets from my officers, and even fewer from my most trusted. I count you among such, and I trust you'll keep this on a need-to-know basis." Danse frowned with concentration and fixed the younger man with an eager look, but Arthur remained with the clouds. "Reports from our deep scouts in the Rad Lands have me concerned. The raider's numbers grow by day, a constant influx of initiates, both the enslaved and willing recruits. Very soon, we may be outnumbered."

His grim tone gave Danse everything he needed as to the implications. This was bigger than any of them had ever anticipated. "Your decision to ally with the Minutemen was insightful."

"We'll see when it comes time to mount an offensive."

He never had been very accepting of praise. Danse studied Arthur's profile, as dark and grim as his tones, with the cloud over his head as forlorn as those beheld in the sky. Was this what was troubling him, or was it something else entirely? The elder was revered for his ruthless and unwavering approach, dauntless in his proactiveness, an untouchable figure of the end justifying the means, so to think he was intimidated by these implications... it was something Danse found difficult to fathom.

He threw caution to the wind. "How are _you_ coping, Arthur?"

It stirred him enough that Danse could detect a ripple beneath the surface—a wavering in the eyes, a tightening of the mouth, applied pressure from the fingers looping the railings. "In regards to..?"

The wind threw caution back to him. "Nothing in particular, sir. Just giving you the same consideration you afforded me."

A long pause. "...I'm coping, Danse." Tense, unaccustomed, but delivered with soft allowance.

Danse made an agreement with the wind to meet it halfway with caution. "I'm glad to hear that. Stress can certainly take its toll. Nobody here would judge if you took some more time to yourself."

To that, Arthur angled him a suspicious eye. "Are you trying to tell me that I should take my own advice?"

"I would never be so foolish," Danse teetered on feigned seriousness.

With a mildly amused huff, Arthur returned to his vigil of the clouds. "We are a pair."

"Of fools?"

He got a minute shrug of the head, a quirked brow "Perhaps... Birds of a feather, it seems."

The two men fell into a comfortable silence as they rested their weight on the railings, the sky growing more bloated with heavy clouds to foreshadow rain over the airport. Danse couldn't recall the last time they had simply loitered off-duty like this, sharing a mutual respect for one another without the regulations hanging over their heads. It was almost casual enough to lounge over a beer each. Perhaps another time, when things weren't so pressing, and they had an appropriate occasion.

But they were both highly productive men, with little desire to lounge with luxury beverages for too long. Arthur fell right back into business mode. "I suppose you've been wondering what became of the intel Harper extracted from the Institute network?"

"Honestly, it had completely slipped my mind, under everything else that's happened since."

"Understandable," Arthur said, pushing off from the railings to pivot on Danse, suddenly resuming his aura of formality once more. Gone was Arthur, returned was Elder Maxson. "Unfortunately, you're not the only one to be bogged down by recent events. Proctor Quinlan has barely had the chance to fully decrypt and analyse the files, due mostly to the increasing pressure to find out all we can about the Vault Prototype and its significance to the Dark Blood raiders. The more we know about it before committing our forces out in their territory, the better our chances to burn them out in an efficient manner and refocus on the Institute."

Danse recognised the shift back into proper decorum and straightened in kind. "If there's anything I can do to assist in speeding things along, just say the word, Elder."

"For now, I just need you to be mission-ready at a moment's notice for your part in Liberty Prime's restoration. We had scout teams out scavenging the Commonwealth for specific parts Proctor Ingram needed, while you were heading the assault on the quarry. Right now, Ingram is busied in her collaborations with Doctor. Li on the reconstruction, but she should be finished any day now. She'll give you and Harper the full brief on your mission, assuming Harper is well enough by then. For now, I will only disclose that this will take you out into the Glowing Sea to secure a cache of nuclear munitions for Prime's arsenal. I don't need to tell you how treacherous it will be, so have yourself aptly prepared."

Danse nodded grimly. He had personally greeted the jaws of radiation sickness many a time, and had developed quite the aquaintence with it. This news did, however, evoke a small festering of concern over Harper's readiness. She would be going from the frying pan straight into hellfire. He also wondered on the elder's fixation with Harper, more so than usual. He had never gotten to the root of the feeling that there was something brewing between the two. Something elusive. It was none of his business, yet it unsettled him all the same, so he ventured forth. "May I ask why Harper's presense is necessary in Prime's reconstruction, sir?"

To that, Maxson gave nothing away, instead just nodding as if expecting the question. "Her loyalty is still in question, and her willingness to commit to this particular mission will solidify her intent with the Brotherhood. Put simply, I'm testing her. If she's onside with delivering these munitions, then I feel we can trust that she's not planning to undermine our efforts in the Commonwealth."

It made sense, Danse decided, albeit with unease. All this deception, these ploys and games. Maxson and Harper should mind their step in this alliance to avoid sparking a civil war. And he was stuck in the middle of it, torn between loyalties.

After the formalities of dismissal and departure, Danse dropped his salute and spun to take his leave, anticipating a night of brooding to accompany either his sleeplessness or nightmares. But Maxson wasn't quite finished with him.

"And Paladin," he called softly, and when Danse turned, he saw the shrewdness in the man's eyes. "Refrain from mentioning this mission to Harper, at least until deployment. She's still an unknown right now, and a possible security risk if she takes it upon herself to attempt an escape to inform her people of our plans."

"Of course, Elder," Danse obeyed. Maxson's eyes glinted a moment before he turned back to his vigil, and Danse departed.

* * *

 **A/N:** Let's just pretend that Bethesda included showers (and restrooms), officer's quarters, and private infirmary units on the Prydwen.

\- About the hiatus. I figured everyone could use a break after the heaviness of the past few chapters.


	32. Elder, General, and Mediator?

**Chapter 32: Elder, General, and... Mediator?**

* * *

Hmm...

Someone had cleaned away the bloody handprint on his chestplate...

Danse stood before his limp power armour, hands on hips in puzzled deliberation, staring at the pristine circle in the centre of the torso, where the handprint had been. The rest of his suit was still swathed thickly in grime and battle-dust. Who in the hell would take it upon themselves to wipe off the handprint so perfectly, even going as far as to polish the steel, but not bother with the rest of the plating? Ingram must have been in one of her odd finicky moods this morning...

Shrugging, Danse grabbed at the cloth slung over his shoulder and got stuck into liberating the rest of his armour.

The rest of the day rolled along in tedium. The paladin kept himself occupied with reports, and power armour maintenance and repairs, but there was only so much he could busy himself with, and soon, there was nothing left to do. Usually at such times of a cleared schedule, he would pass the hours with either some high intensity cardio or delve into some weights, but his body was still filing him complaints from yesterday's outing, so he decided to take it easy.

Plus, the headache was particularly sharp today. Nightmares of drowning in a pool of blood and oil hadn't aided him much, either. At least it was a break from the usual recurring nightmares...

So, he was free, bored, and in the mood for some idle chat to take his mind off last night's addition to his nightmare collection. It all collated to the perfect excuse to visit Harper.

Retiring his tools from his armour, Danse grabbed his bomber jacket by the scruff and went off in the direction of the private infirmary units, keeping his head down as way of avoiding unwanted run-ins and discouraging any prompts. In the back of his mind, there was also his want to remain inconspicuous to his intentions. But why? He was off-duty, and a commissioned officer, meaning he was free to roam the Prydwen at his leisure, which included visiting a wounded friend.

Because she was just a friend.

He was being ridiculous. There was nothing wrong with it at all. He was completely within his rights to check in on her.

Strangely, the front counter was devoid of Knight-Captain Cade. Shouldn't he be keeping an eye on her? In fact, Danse wouldn't have put it past Maxson to have stationed a guard at the entrance. More so to keep Harper in than to protect against intruders.

He stood idly in the entranceway for a moment, contemplating his next actions, scratching at his stubble. Cocking a single brow, he leaned back to peer down the hall, scoping out each direction for possible lurkers. No one. Would his visiting her unattended look suspicious?

Hmm...

He was being ridiculous.

Leaning back into the room, Danse shrugged and wandered in deeper, checking out Cade's setup as he approached the plastic panel screening Harper's cubical.

"Harper?"

No answer. Hmm.

"Harper, you in there?" he tried again, listening intently for any rustlings of sheets. When there was still no answer, he glanced back at the entrance, then shifted aside the screen.

She wasn't in there.

The pit of Danse's stomach froze over. Oh, no.

Like a surge of lightning it ignited and spread through his brain. She had escaped, gone AWOL, again! The how and why of it didn't even commute to his brain as he burst into action-mode and barrelled out of the private infirmary. Maybe he had only just missed her. Maybe he could still catch her. He skipped the steps and instead descended them in one hurried leap to then vault over the railings of the next flight like a madman on an apocalyptic mission. His haste drew stares from those in the mess hall, the sight of a highly favoured paladin in so frantic a state quite alarming to them, and also adding some excitement to their menial activities.

Upon his approach to the rungs descending down to the Command Deck, however, his pace slowed.

Raised voices.

He came to a panted halt, listening, oblivious to those who had stood from their seats in the mess to lean down the hall and watch his descent into madness.

He had listened to enough of Elder Maxson's passionate speeches to recognise the raised octave of his voice, but the other voice competing with his... he had only heard her like that in the heat of battle, or, more recently, during her wrath at Clay-Crawler's incompetence.

Maxson and Harper were clashing.

He had thought the two had smoothed things over and were planning to combine forces, but this sounded very much as if they had taken a step backward. Overcome with curiosity, Danse eavesdropped, catching snatches of their words.

"If you won't do it, then I refuse to serve under you in the Brotherhood, and you can kiss your Institute asset goodbye."

"Emotional blackmail will get you nowhere, Harper. I made my decision back then, and I stand by it even now that our forces are allied." Maxson spoke in clipped tones, voice straining under the weight of anger.

Harper, however, sounded far beyond restraint. "So you don't even feel the tinniest bit of regret about it? For the lives that could have been spared if you helped us from the start?" There was a pause. "You fucking zealot," she snarled in burning disappointment.

"Remember that I've been doing this far longer than you have. I learned long ago that striving to save every life is a luxury I can't afford. One day soon I think you'll learn it for yourself, too."

"Damn it, can you just put aside your pride for this once? You don't even have to mean it, just say it."

"I will do no such thing." Testy, but resolute.

Harper clicked her tongue in irritation, then changed her tactics, instead speaking with soft menace. Danse strained to hear her. "Things were tense back there between them all, and I know for a fact that the Minutemen don't trust your people a single bit. It also doesn't help that none of your soldiers respect the Minutemen, it was practically painted on their foreheads. How do you expect them to co-operate with each other if there's all this tension and shit under the surface?"

"My men and women will respect those that they deem worthy, and no speech of mine on their account will force it. It must be earned. You should know that."

"I'm not asking you to force their respect, I'm asking you to just apologise. You know, get the ball rolling."

"Apologise for what? For their incompetence?" An insult lurked in his reply.

That ruffled her feathers, and set them on fire. "Apologise for leaving my people out to dry as cannon fodder, you arrogant fuck!"

That was enough. Danse had to do something to stop them blowing a hole in the Prydwen. He climbed down the rungs to see the two on the observation bridge, both seated on a red sofa each, across from one another, all tension and stare-downs. Danse froze at the base of the ladder and stared. They hadn't even noticed him, both just sitting and pretending to be sophisticated, obviously failing immensely at it. What on earth were they _doing?_

"That was not my intention," Maxson denied Harper's fiery accusation, fixing her with a sharp glare. "But if it had been, I would still stand by it as a calculated decision. War calls for such choices."

Harper was leaning forward so far on the sofa that Danse was surprised she hadn't yet sprung from it to descend upon the elder. "Don't give me your hard-wisdom bullshit, Maxson."

"Someone has to. It's obvious you've been lacking it, as of late, with your recent choice of indulgence."

Danse wondered at that, but the thought was gone as soon as it came, as Harper was up and on her feet like wildfire, stalking toward Maxson with fists coiled tightly at her sides. Maxson stood to meet her, and she thrust her index finger at his face. "Don't you use that against me! You have no fucking idea what I went through down there, while you sat up here on your throne, moving your chess pieces like a bitch." She lowered her finger, but stepped in even closer to Maxson, eyes of molten fury, lips a grim line, hovering right in his air. Although Maxson was taller, she negated the effect with her pure intensity. The elder's face was a rictus of shackled wrath, and Danse knew as witness that one look from it could unsettle even the hardiest of star paladins. But Harper was wrath in herself.

"Or is that it?" she sniped through clenched teeth, edging in even closer. "You're such a bitch that the thought of swallowing your pride and apologising to my people makes your balls shrivel up and tuck themselves inside your man-pussy?"

Danse's eyes went wide at her nerve. So did Maxson's.

The elder's fists scrunched so tightly that his leather gloves were audibly straining. Danse knew for a fact that the revered man was not accustomed to being spoken back to like this, and especially not with such vulgarity. He was teeming with rage, yet he let his voice be the delivery of his temper.

"Enough!"

Harper gave a little space at his outburst, but refused to back down entirely, even as Maxson stepped in on her to even the scores. " _You_ had it tough down there? _I've_ had it tough my entire life to get to where I am now! So don't you dare think for a moment that I haven't had my fair share of battles to overcome and temptations to resist!"

"Then prove it to me! Grow some balls and make battle with your pride!"

"I will not be pressured into an apology on false pretenses to a rabble of farmhands!"

Danse was at a loss. Harper was an inferno and Maxson was a hurricane, their elements clashing into an apocalypse of their own. Why were they out here where others could hear them? Shouldn't they be in Maxson's quarters? What was Harper even doing down here? She should be recovering, not competing with the elder in a screaming match. The woman was insatiable.

Growing balls of his own, Danse purposefully cleared his throat.

Huffing and puffing at each other, the two snapped their mouths shut and finally took notice of him. Maxson made an effort to collect himself and resume a regal posture, while Harper looked utterly caught-out, backing down from Maxson with ashamed eyes. She even flushed a little.

Now, how on earth did she have the audacity to speak to Maxson like that, yet blush and shy away when Danse caught her in the act? Was his opinion really that important to her?

"Is there something you need, Paladin Danse?" Maxson prompted rather bitterly, obviously annoyed at the intrusion.

"I'm sorry, Elder," Danse stammered, feeling out of place now that the war had subsided. "I overheard the both of you, and wanted to make sure that everything was alright. You were... rather loud." Harper seemed to wince with shame.

Maxson cast her a gritted look, as if she had been the only one responsible for the volume, before looking back to Danse. "We were... _attempting_ negotiations." He pinched at his nose bridge. "Things became a little heated. It's apparent we have yet to fully iron out the...kinks, for lack of a better word."

To that, Harper rolled him a look of disdain, then crossed her arms and shook her head. "That's putting it mildly."

Danse observed the two children in the awkward silence. There was something else going on here, something Maxson had on Harper that she wasn't too fond of being at his mercy with. She was playing a dangerous game, hounding at Maxson like that. She may be a leader with power behind her, but Danse didn't think she had the full scope of the power Maxson wielded at his fingertips.

How could he mediate them while restrained by the chain of command? This whole situation was chaotic, but he had been the link that brought these two charismatic powerhouses together, and he was both their most trusted ally. He was in the middle, and the mediator, whether he liked it or not.

"Is there some way I could help, here? Perhaps I could speak with the Minutemen, apologise on your behalf, Elder? I've worked with them on multiple occasions, and they might respond well to a sympathetic face, so to speak."

"No. Thank you, but that won't be necessary, Paladin... Although that does bring about a matter I've been meaning to investigate." Maxson turned a suspicious eye on Danse, all of a sudden. "Harper's status with the Minutemen. Did you, or did you not, know about it?"

Danse caught his recoil of alarm and kept a steady mask. He had prepared himself for this inevitability and jumped into the deceit on autopilot. "Absolutely not, Elder. Although I was aware that Harper was highly regarded by the Minutemen and an active spokesperson, she was never revealed to me as their general." Whether Maxson had dissected the untruth or not, as he could so easily do with him, Danse couldn't tell, because Harper instantly whisked up his attention.

"It's true. I never told him, and I made sure people didn't call me General to my face." She shrugged innocently. "The title never sat right with me."

Maxson eyed them both, his jaw shifting from side to side, then he suddenly seemed overcast with fatigue and gave a fraught sigh, turning his back on them both to pace over to the observation windows. "I've had enough for today. Harper, you should return to your unit and get some rest. Cade shouldn't have even allowed you to be up and about yet."

Harper's eyes followed him narrowly. "Don't you turn this around onto me. We're not done here. I want my apology, _Elder_."

Danse tensed up again. The way she used his title against him was blasphemous and... _outstanding_. He couldn't help but be in awe of her... and couldn't help but await Maxson's response with... anticipation. Their squabble was _thrilling_ him, he realised, and he was utterly ashamed of himself for it. Yet, not enough to interject.

Maxson turned, slowly—his eyes, so dark. "You're testing my patience, Harper," he said in a low growl.

"Good." She unfolded her arms and prowled toward him again, keeping the pressure on yet tempering her body language into something akin to gentle persuasion. Maxson appeared to go taut again at her nearness, knowing he was in for something new.

"Remember what your very first words to me were, Maxson?" Harper evoked his memory, voice a soothing timbre. Danse caught something glimmer across his elder's features as he held himself rigid to endure her. "You told me that you cared about the people of the Commonwealth," she reminded him, coming to a halt before him, not too near, not too far. "Until recently, I hadn't believed you..."

Danse briefly wondered what had happened between them 'recently' that had changed her mind.

"So if you really meant it, then you won't disappoint me." Harper held his eye a fraction longer after her words echoed, then she parted from his shadow and softly made her way toward Danse, meeting his eye for a moment before she passed him. "I'll be out getting some fresh air."

Danse waited while Maxson soaked that in, lingering in his place, disconnected.

"Sir?"

Maxson then spared him a look, vexed. "Follow her, please," he ordered with a strain in his vocals, bringing a tense hand up to press at his eyelids, as if to stifle a headache. "Make sure she doesn't start a rebellion on my Flight Deck." The sarcasm lost its effect once he sought the railings to support his tired weight.

"Yes, sir!"

Danse had time to worry for the both of them as he made for the hatch out to the Flight Deck. This alliance had been formed on unsteady foundations, and already it appeared to be crumbling. Harper had always been a feisty protector, and not only of the innocent, but of anyone in need, and to a fault, even. And Maxson, although rarely letting his ego overshadow his judgment, had standards and a reputation to uphold—which excluded grovelling to undisciplined civilians for their co-operation.

Perhaps he was biased, but surely Harper understood that?

Then again, she had never agreed with all of the Brotherhood's standards.

But even greater than his concern for the alliance, was his concern for their wellbeing—he cared for the both of them. Elder Maxson, although eclipsing him both in rank and perhaps wisdom, was his junior in age, and Danse had always felt a slight paternal instinct toward him—not in guidance, Maxson was graced with a fully educated upbringing and far more equipped with knowledge than Danse would ever be, but he felt a natural protectiveness over him that went beyond duty. The young elder was without a doubt under mountainous stress, juggling with the Institute threat and the raider uprising, managing this new fragile alliance, and not to mention the daily burden of personally seeing to the wounded, and tracking the reports of deaths in the field. To have all that on his conscience, based on his decision to campaign out in the Commonwealth, must be a heavy burden indeed.

And Harper was a wreck in more ways than one, thrown into an alien world from the destruction of her own, grieving for multiple losses and nearly working herself to death to escape it all.

They were both similar in that they covered their stress with constant activity and stoic moulds, anger like a second skin they pulled on to fuel their drive. Neither of them needed the added stress of dealing with each other.

Hmm. In thinking that, was he himself any different?

Never mind. This wasn't about him. How could he ease the tension between them and make both of their lives easier?

It was clear that he had his work cut out for him.

* * *

 **A/N:** This was way too much fun for me :3 Please excuse Maxson's douchebaggery and Ilya's indecency...

\- Looking back, I should have called this chapter "Hmm..."


	33. Aba Daba Honeymoon

**Aba Daba Honeymoon**

* * *

Danse wouldn't have put it past Harper to start a rebellion out on the Flight Deck. Well, attempt to, anyway. Influential, Maxson may have deemed her, but Danse doubted she would have the capability to sway any in the Brotherhood from their loyalty to Maxson, even the less traditional members. Especially considering her rogue reputation within their ranks.

Nevertheless, she would probably still give it her best shot.

But, no. By the sight of her, such a feat was beyond even her right now.

She was out on the far side of the catwalks, leaning listlessly on the railings, gazing across the ruins of the once great city as the sunset bathed it in a warm ambiance. Danse stopped at the base of the steps for a moment just to watch her, her dark hair gilded by the sunlight, melding with the orange of her uniform to brighten an otherwise ailing complexion. Burdened, she was a lone figure limned by the fading light of day, a sad air etched into her silhouette.

His quiet approach didn't draw her eye; it seemed she had expected him to follow.

"I'm sorry you had to see that, back there," she opened, eyes still fixed out on the Wastes.

Danse came to settle against the railings at her side. "You'd think I'd be used to it by now."

She snuck a look up at him to identify his quip, then gave him a little smile and quickly returned her gaze outbound. "You'd think so..."

"...I was under the impression that you and Maxson were on the same page, or at least civil..."

"We are," Harper assured, though the catch of uncertainty in her voice said otherwise, "but we're still, as he so eloquently put it, _ironing out the kinks._ " Her dark brows illustrated the quote in a dancing rhythm of satire. "This is just the honeymoon phase. The hot tango before settling into married life."

Danse gave a humoured grunt at that. She smirked at the notion, too, but he caught a ghost of pain in her eyes that lingered as she cast them back to the sunset. Her own parody must have backfired with the reminder of her deceased husband.

He allowed a pause for respite. "Harper..." Her shoulders gave in a faint slump at the weight of his tone. "I think it's time we talked about some things. Particularly your health."

A swallow. A blink. "I know."

So far, so good. Now, how on earth did he broach this as a friend, and not a superior officer? This was where he always struggled. Touching on the topic of her health was a feat in itself, and one that he was surprised she accepted so docilely, but to actually follow through and open a discussion on it while being careful not to put his foot in his mouth and hurt her feelings, all the while avoiding coming across as an overbearing ogre, now that was the obstacle.

With his approach to Maxson the day before, there had been a mutual ground, a shared aspect of stress and the bonds of decorum to fall back on if he overstepped. But with Harper, he couldn't simply back off and hide behind his rank; they were too close for that, he would be failing her.

It dawned on him, as he shifted his weight and cleared his throat, that he didn't know how to be a friend. It had been so long since Cutler.

How do you be a friend?

The simplicity of his dilemma was ludicrous.

Danse noticed that she had slanted her head, was watching him, not expectantly, but sympathetically. He felt such a useless fool.

But she just smiled, soothingly. "Danse, it's okay. You don't have to tip-toe around me. Just say what you really think, even if it's to tell me how pathetic I've been, letting myself get like this. I need to hear it."

It would be easy if he could just go back to thinking of her as his charge, and lecture her on the importance of proper sustenance in order to perform at her peak as an efficient soldier—perhaps this is what she expects and even wants him to say to her. But they were more than just paladin and knight now. And she wasn't his charge anymore.

But to tell her what he really thought? That it was his fault she had let herself go? His fault she had nearly died, because he abandoned her, even after knowing she had been enduring suicidal thoughts, had been falling down a dark path. She had even worked up the courage to confide that in him herself, and he _still_ abandoned her. What if she agreed that it was all his doing? What if she realised his selfishness had been the root of her self-destruction, and hated him for it? They were just starting to get back on track, and he didn't want to lose that again.

He truly was a selfish coward.

"You're not pathetic, Harper," he eventually murmured, giving her an earnest look. She buried her gaze into her boots and he saw her jaw pulse. Striving to endure. "You're not," he pressed, and when she wouldn't meet his eye and a shallow frown carved itself into her brow, he said, "Look at me."

She dragged her gaze up, eyes filming over with unshed tears, though her face was set, hardened. Like a soldier.

Every fibre of his being wanted to reach a hand to the taper of her jaw and gently stroke away that mask. "You've been through hell. And I'm sorry I wasn't there for you... Do you remember what I promised you, that night out in the cabin?"

 _I'll always have your back, even in the worst of times. I promise._

"I remember," she whispered, nodding slightly.

"I intend to make up for breaking that promise. Whatever happens between us from here on out, I'll have your back, no matter what. This time I truly mean it."

When she blinked back the threat of her tears and unfurled a grateful smile, Danse fully realised what he had just said, just _promised_ , and wondered if he should have. His heart had conquered his tongue before his brain had a chance to think it through. What if their relationship got in the way of his duty again? Why did he keep contradicting himself? Why did he keep doing this with her?

But when Harper placed her smaller hand atop his on the railing, fingers subtly clinching between his own, his doubts evaporated.

"We both know that's a promise you shouldn't make," she denied him softly, though her fingers squeezed his even more. "And we've _both_ been through hell. I know you, how you blame yourself for everything that goes tits up—no don't shake your head, you know it's true." Her consoling smile ebbed away, replaced by a steady clarity to catch him in her sapphires. "I don't want you putting my mess on yourself. It wasn't like that. I was already on a bad road and would have reached the end of it regardless. I'm in this mess because of me... and I don't want you to sacrifice anything else for my sake, especially not your integrity. Not again. Just knowing I still have a friend in you is enough." Her eyes held his for a long, meaningful moment, so deep were her dimensions that he could have dived right into her soul and discovered her anew; the never-ending facets of her character. And he had once called her selfish. She softened again. "But thank you, Danse. I'm okay. You don't need to worry."

He frowned in worry anyway. She wasn't going to let him in. Most likely because he had already failed her. He gazed wistfully at their hands, then her sapphires again. They were no longer glazed by tears, but by the glow of the sun. She looked healthy again in that moment, lines and scars less pronounced, dark shadows banished and skin radiant in the honeyed light.

"Well, I'll still be here for you," he told her gently. "Anytime you need to talk, I won't be far away."

"Good," she then grinned playfully, lightening the mood in her usual way. "Neither will I. I kinda like having you around."

"The feeling's mutual, soldier," he returned in kind.

They shared a bashful smile and chuckled off the soppiness, fidgeting before settling their gazes back to the cityscape. He wasn't sure where to go from there, but Harper eased his troubles by changing the subject herself.

"How are your ears, by the way?"

From the explosion in the mines, he remembered. "Fully functional. That Stimpak you gave me did the trick." He was surprised she hadn't gotten around to issuing a boot up his rear end for that 'madman' incident. Maybe she was just trying to keep the peace between them for now. "And your fingers?"

She lifted both hands to show him. "Nearly all healed. Hallelujah Stimpaks." She was right, they were nearly fully healed, though the few nails that had been completely ripped off would still take time to regrow.

"I went to see Dogmeat again this morning," Harper went on fluidly. "Ketway told me his internal wounds were healing up. They had to do a blood transfusion to get it to work. Something about being deprived of oxygen for so long. I didn't understand everything he said, but Neriah helped translate."

Danse had a fleeting worry of possible brain damage, with the canine being starved of oxygen for so long, but kept it to himself; she didn't need the extra worry. "That's just Ketway's way of making himself seem intellectually superior to everyone else," he commented with mild distaste. Harper skirted him a sidelong glance.

"Look who's talking."

Oof. Where did that come from? But when her look gave way to a teasing grin, Danse let it slide. "Point taken."

That was a mistake. After that, all hell broke loose. She spun against the railings to rest her rump against it, crossing one leg over the other and folding her arms. A thoughtful semblance came over her, and he registered the mischief beneath. "You know, you and Maxson are actually really alike."

 _Birds of a feather..._ It seemed that all three of them shared a likeness in some shape or form. "Really?" he decided to humour her, though warily. He copied her shift, turning and leaning back against the railings, folding his arms over his chest in comfort. "In what way?"

"Well, you both live and breathe the Brotherhood, you're both big, manly barbarians who suck at expressing your feelings, and then there's the superiority complexes to boot."

What? Barbarian? Superiority complex? The daring thing. That was absurd. He chaffed. "A superiority com—" Danse then checked his rebuff, realising she was right. He rubbed at the back of his neck. "Well... I..."

A gentle chuckle revved to life in her chest. "But you wouldn't be _you_ any other way."

That was nice. But... a barbarian? Hell, she was really ripping into him this evening. All that extra food intake must be going straight to her head, fuelling a fresh rampage of banter. Well, he wasn't without his defences...

"Remember yesterday, in the infirmary, my confession to Knight-Captain Cade...?"

Her brow creased in remembrance. "Mhm, yesterday was a long time ago, after a _lot_ of sleeping... Confession... you mean when you joked about throwing me overboar—... wait..."

She caught on to his awaiting grin too late, squealing loudly in protest as he grabbed her by the waist and feigned an attempt at lifting her over the railings. Her kicking and swatting at his hands and his equal fumblings for a grip on her must have tickled at her ribs, because she squirmed uncontrollably and her squeals morphed into peals of girlish giggles.

"No, no, no Danse! Stop! Put me down! Okay, okay, I surrender!"

Danse couldn't contain his delight at her expense as he set her down, chuckling at the murderous look she shot him before she, too, broke into more laughter. Several deck scribes had ceased their maintenance duties to crane looks over at them. The two waved the okay at them, both suddenly feeling childish and self-conscious.

Oh, if Maxson had seen them now, after he had been sent out to keep her in line. Instead, he was tickling her. The fallout...

...Would have been worth it, Danse concluded as Harper continued to smile up at him. Only she could make him feel inclined to act so... freely. He had never acted so spontaneously out of his comfort zone, but he had also never been so rewarded; she looked so vivacious, cheeks flushed with exhilaration, eyes bright and lively, smile flaring as plump, rehydrated lips revealed the full range of her pristine, pre-war teeth. She was positively glowing. He hadn't seen her like that in so long. God damn, he really wanted to—

"Hey! Isn't it past your curfew, Knight?"

They both spun to see Danse's former Rad Land op squad single-filing out from the entrance hatch, Knight Lynch at the head with a surprised smile contrasting against her mocha skin-tone.

She strolled toward them, eyes fixed on Harper. "It's good to see you're doing better, Harper." She then regarded Danse with a considerable step-up in formality, including an enthusiastic Brotherhood salute. "Sir!"

"Knight," he returned.

She refocused on Harper, moving aside to allow her squad past. "I wanted to come pay a visit in my off-hours, but Knight-Captain Cade said you were off limits by Elder Maxson's order."

Harper crossed her arms and sloped up a brow. "Really?"

"Yeah. I didn't ask questions, not my place. We're scheduled for night patrol a couple times this week, but I'll squeeze in some time for a beer or two soon, yeah?" Lynch began backing up to fall in again with her squad as they piled in to their vertibird.

"Sounds good," Harper nodded before the other woman turned to fall in, all energized for patrol. "Hey, Duval!" Harper then called out, and Danse saw the lancer-knight pop his head out from the vertibird cockpit. "Nice moustache!"

"Thanks, Harper! The ladies really dig it!" he called back with character.

As the vertibird's twin engines roared to life, Harper then muttered from the corner of her mouth, "He looks like a pedophile."

Danse said nothing in response, but smirked. He wouldn't have put it quite in those words, but he agreed.

They both watched in a comfortable silence as the vertibird broke free from its bonds and assailed the winds, veering off toward the outskirts of Boston city. Danse sent a fleeting wish for them to keep safe throughout the night, and wondered, hoped, that their brief time under his command had equipped them with such capacity to do so.

The very same wish was always applied prior to battle for the woman beside him, also. So much so that his head swam with his kaleidoscope of wishes. This past week had been torturous for him.

Harper sighed contentedly and draped her body forward on the railings, elbows keeping her balance. He had an outstanding opportunity to conduct a study of her well-sculpted rear, but decided against the perversion, instead just settling for a quickscope.

"I honestly expected more people here to be giving me the cold shoulder after I went AWOL," Harper mused aloud, watching the vertibird in the distance. "Those guys are a sport, and quite a lot of the others have been pretty chill about the whole thing, too." Her bottom lip shrugged. "Guess there's still a lot I have to learn about the Brotherhood."

Danse felt a passing jealously for whoever would be assigned the task of mentoring her in his stead, but quelled it and instead forced a sense of appreciation for whoever that might be—at least they would do a better job than he had. Maxson would make sure of it.

But until then, he could still offer her pointers here and there about Brotherhood decorum and culture. As a friend. "I think you'll find that the more liberal members of the Brotherhood are more willing to understand the reasons for your actions. There's always been a rift in our culture, a division between traditionalists and liberalists, with recruitment of Wastelanders and such, and especially since Elder Maxson reunited the Brotherhood with the Outcasts back in the Capital Wasteland."

She shifted with interest, peering around at him. "I've heard a little about the Outcasts, but not much."

He really should have taken the time to explain the recent history of the Brotherhood to her sooner, but with her constant activity to resolve every single problem she came across from the moment they were assigned together and set loose upon the Commonwealth, there had been little time to sit her down and properly divulge a history lesson. He doubted she would have appreciated it much, anyway, with her open contention for certain Brotherhood principles.

But now, she actually seemed interested. It delighted him.

Danse stood straighter, proud to indulge her with the history of his people, if chequered. "The Outcasts were a splinter faction that disapproved of Elder Lyons' vision for the Brotherhood of Steel. While the Brotherhood's original purpose was the safeguarding of humanity by reclamation of advanced technology, Lyons instilled a new mission for the East Coast sect; aiding the people of the Capital Wasteland.

"Paladin Henry Casdin led the Outcasts in their exodus from the Citadel, and they established themselves at Fort Independence, north a ways. Relations between the Brotherhood of Steel and the Outcast's grew hostile, despite Elder Lyons' claims of understanding the division.

"And then it was Maxson, at only sixteen years of age, who managed to reunite our division with a truce, reverting our mission to the preservation of pre-war technology, but still making the effort to aid Wastelanders where appropriate. That was the mark of Maxson's inauguration to Elder." He felt pride for his elder swell, and he grinned into the sky, watching memories of the adolescent the now-man had once been. "That was when I first met him."

He became aware of how closely Harper had been watching him, her features sharp with an acute focus. "You were an Outcast," she surmised softly.

She was good, almost as good as Maxson. Danse gave a stoical nod. He awaited her judgement.

Confusion was at the forefront. "But, Krieg at Adams Air Force Base, and your mission to... to save Cutler."

Despite her sensitivity at mentioning Cutler, Danse still felt the pang that came with the memory. He mustered his will and went in to explain. "I wasn't one of the first defectors." He sighed to recall. "It was after getting word of Paladin Krieg's death that things became unclear to me. I lost sight of Elder Lyons' vision and began to question the circumstances of Krieg's death, and whether Lyons was leading the Brotherhood toward a sustainable future for mankind. The Enclave were truly evil and had to be stopped, yes, but Lyons was hampering that goal by wasting men and resources on settling the squabbles between the local Wastelanders, completely disregarding our core purpose of a long term sustainable future. What if those same men and resources would have been allocated to that battle? What if that could have been the difference between life and death for Paladin Krieg? It hit me, that that wasn't the Brotherhood that resonated with me.

"Even at the rank of Paladin, and with a squad of my own, I was prepared to give that all up to do what felt right in my heart. For the Brotherhood of Steel. For humanity. So I approached Cutler with my reasoning. In the back of my mind, I think my ultimate decision to defect weighed on whether or not he would agree with me; I wouldn't have left without him at my side. Krieg had sponsored both of us as trainees, and his death had been hard on Cutler, too. Eventually, he agreed. I remember leaving the very same day that resource gathering began for the construction of the Prydwen.

"Cutler and I spent the next five or so years with the Outcasts. Despite donning that moniker as a badge of honour in upholding the Brotherhood's true beliefs, I never really considered myself an Outcast. None of us did. We were still Brotherhood. The true Brotherhood." He tried to declare that with conviction, hardening his brow in an attempt to elicit his pride, but it wavered with the remembrance of how he felt at that time. "But those were among some of the darkest years of my life. Living with doubts over whether I'd made the right decision, avoiding Lyons' Brotherhood to prevent unnecessary deaths, purposefully neglecting the innocent and suffering... We didn't talk about it, but I felt sure that Cutler was having the same doubts as I.

"It wasn't until Maxson took it upon himself to reunite the two factions that Cutler and I felt confidence once more in the Brotherhood's direction. During that precarious time of forming a truce, Maxson and I crossed paths and found ourselves within the core of the civil unrest. We had a bit of an incident to deal with and got to know each other pretty well before he took up the mantle of Elder." He humphed in memoriam. "I didn't even know who he was at first... Considering I had served in the Citadel and had seen him in passing as a young boy on multiple occasions, you'd think I'd have recognised him. But in those few years, he had grown unrecognisable...

"Anyway, not long after his inauguration, construction on the Prydwen was complete and she was ready for service. Cutler and I were stationed aboard... Then about a year later... he disappeared. You know the rest."

Harper soaked in the echoes of his recital in silence for a moment, her head continuously nodding in so subtle a way that it was nearly imperceptible. Slowly, she straightened with him, her eyes holding him with a new clarity. Appreciation. It went against his expectation. "Heart of steel," she spoke, and he wondered at her smile. "You really are Brotherhood at heart. We might have our differences, but I don't think I could ever respect anyone more than you, Danse." Her tone was wistful, in awe of him. He didn't know how to feel about it.

"You're not... disappointed?"

A small huff, amused. "No. Never. You're..." she trailed off, lips slightly parted, eyes dancing between his, and she never finished her words, shaking her head. "No, I don't think I could ever be disappointed in you, Danse."

He longed in her eyes, and she in his, the wind shaping its silent passage between them for a length of lost time before they both remembered themselves.

"So," Harper diverted, never failing to shift the mood, "you and Maxson met when he formed the truce. There a good story there?"

"Quite a story, actually," Danse confirmed, noting how her features lit up with intrigue. "It ties in with that story I owe you on how I learned to pilot."

"Oh, this sounds good."

He chuckled at the way she licked her lips and then curled them into a slow, playful smile. "But I think it's a story better suited to a night over a few drinks. There are a few aspects of it that are a little embarrassing to recall."

She loved that even more, her eyes dancing with mirth as she sidled closer and elbowed him. "Paladin Danse has a doozy story? _No way!_ There's no escape now. I'm holding you to this."

Hmm. On second thought, maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all. But if exposing an embarrassing event from his past kept her in high spirits, then it would be worth the ridicule. "Just don't make me regret this," he warned just as playfully.

She released one of her naughty chuckles, which he had learned was usually a prelude to something, indeed, naughty. "Don't worry," she placated him, but her slightly exaggerated tone left him wary. "Your secret's safe with me... unless it's just waaay too good to keep from Deacon."

"In that case, you should know that if he threatens to damage my reputation, I'll just have to kill him."

This time, her chuckle was of an impressed nature, raising her hands in surrender. "Okay, you win. I'll keep it on the down-low." She then mellowed out her grin. "But in all seriousness, thank you for telling me about your past. It sounded like it was a hard time for all of the Brotherhood, whatever side people were on. I'm glad you felt comfortable enough telling me about it."

He took in her sincerity and nodded his matching appreciation. "Thank you for listening and understanding. I think we all have things in our pasts that make us question who we are. If you ever feel the need to talk something out, you know you can always come to me, too."

He expected her to just smile or give words of agreement or gratitude, but instead he caught a ripple of doubt flit over her face before she tamed it. Then came the smile. "Yeah, of course." She returned her gaze out on the Commonwealth.

There was obviously something bothering her. Danse wished she would let him in, let him help. But could he really blame her for it? After all, he had been the one to spread the void between them and relinquish his charge.

He wished he could have both her and the Brotherhood.

A chill breeze swept through her hair, dark strands wisping over her face, and god damn, he wanted to brush them aside with an ache in his fingertips. She shivered.

"Cold?" he asked.

"A little," she shrugged.

So Danse shook off his bomber jacket, ignoring her small sound of embarrassed dismissal as he brought it around her shoulders. "You need to keep yourself warm," he justified, leaving out the part about her having lost so much insulating body fat.

Harper gathered the jacket around herself appreciatively. "Thanks."

They spent a comforting while just standing side-by-side, admiring the eventide and the calm it induced over the Commonwealth. This stolen moment with her, escaping his own turmoil, was just what Danse needed. He hoped it was helping her, too.

"I love it up here," Harper then spoke dreamily, leaning deeper into the railings again. This time, the jacket kept him from being distracted. "The calm, the quiet... Seeing the city from this high up, if I squint, I can almost pretend I'm back in the past."

He nodded. "Considering the city took some direct hits during the war, it's astonishing so much of it is still standing."

"I wish you could have seen it back then, Danse. It was really something, even if the world was slowly crumbling around it all. I hate seeing how far it's all fallen."

Humming, Danse wondered if he would have been impressed at all. "These buildings are nothing but monuments to greed. The Brotherhood functions perfectly well with just a Spartan approach to infrastructure." Harper only turned an amused look on his harsh judgment, and he realised that his comment had been a little uncalled for. Even when he was an imbecile, she always understood and accepted him.

How different she was with him, compared with how she dealt with Maxson. It made him value their bond anew, and pray that they never became rivals. She would probably give him nightmares. _More_ nightmares.

With a luxuriating sigh, Harper turned back to the ruins to continue her nostalgic vigil, breathing deeply, eyes closing, as if taking in the full sensation of the winds and reliving a precious memory. He longed for her hand atop his once more.

"If only there was some way I could take you back to see it all," she said into the wind, so quietly he almost didn't hear her. "To show you how amazing it all was, despite the corruption and bullshit underneath. There was still good in humanity, just like there is now, and we had created some truly beautiful things with all that good, just like we have now, too."

Danse gnawed the inside of his cheek and wondered. She may be right, but what good did it do humanity back then? It all still came to a destructive end because humanity had gone too far, too fast.

Harper focused back on him in his silence, deep blue eyes bursting with an emotion he couldn't fathom. Sentiment? Pride? She smiled, a glimpse of her spirit returning. "I think you would have been impressed, maybe even liked it back then, if you could have seen it for yourself. I wish I could show you."

He hummed again, considering this—the world she had come from, the world that had shaped the remarkable woman she was, brought the goodness in her to fruition. She had listened to his world. He would listen to hers.

"So tell me about it," he encouraged warmly, smiling at her.

She smiled back.

* * *

 **A/N:** Danse's past with the Outcasts is not official canon, just my headcanon. His time in the Brotherhood prior to FO4 is somewhat of a blank canvas, and I liked the idea of a rogue, Outcast Danse, a little dark spot in his past to reinforce his dedication even further, but also to humanize him. And it tied in with his and Maxson's back-story perfectly and gave me an opportunity to flesh out their bond more.

Bee – lol Danseypoo :3 I laughed when I read that because I took to calling him 'Danseyboo' whenever he did something stupid in-game, e.g. rushing and bashing at a mutant suicider and making me come save his sorry ass... But at least it gave me inspo for the fic!

Heaven in a Rage – Just in case you didn't get an email alert, I sent you a PM after your review for ch30 :) As for future stories, I haven't planned on anything. This is my first ever fanfic and I started writing it as a spur of the moment thing to keep me busy while I took a break from my novel series. It grew into something way bigger than I had originally planned! For Maxson, he's still going to be a major side character even after Blind Betrayal, and I have a lot planned for him yet. It's so uplifting to hear that you're enjoying his part in this so much, I'm also enjoying writing him a lot more than I expected I would! I hope you will continue to enjoy the drama to come :D

Bianca (on your review for ch29) – I'm glad some of the elements are reminding you of F:NV, because it was actually the inspiration for the Blood Lands (aka Rad Land), along with some others. I love desert settings and NV had a special place in my heart :) (your review for ch30) – Operation: Apple Run might be a thing, you never know ;) And about the mystery silhouette, not telling :P


	34. Gathering Storms

**Gathering Storms**

* * *

A bitter wind scoured the desert, rasping at the initiate's raw skin, his tattered rags doing nothing to provide protection. He shivered and blew out a train of pale air, casting his eyes skyward to steal a look at the stars before the guards could notice his slacking. Few nights in the Blood Lands were clear of the Red Menace, and he wanted to savour the clear sight before the storms rolled back in to cloud it all in their violent greed.

Red Menace, he scoffed internally. These raiders were so ignorant. If only the pre-war Soviets or Chinese would invade the deserts and liberate them all. He would gladly become a P.O.W if it meant escape from this hell, and Third-Degree's torture sessions...

He sighed, glanced at the knuckle joint of his missing finger, and continued shovelling mounds of dirt and sand onto the exposed oil pipeline as it spewed a fountain upon him and the other slaves around him. The Red Claws had really done a number on the wells this time.

When would their raiding parties rescue _him_ for once? Even if they found him, would they even bother cutting him loose? He wasn't one of them, and if they knew he was from the Brotherhood, they would likely think him just as much the enemy as the Dark Bloods.

So, no Chinese or Red Claws were coming to save him. He really was screwed.

Thunder beat on the wind at the initiate's back, and he turned with a groan, thinking it the radstorms come to rub salt in his wounds, but the sight instead made a different kind of dread worm in his gut. It was a vertibird. And only the battle commanders travelled by vertibird.

The circle of slaves stopped their shovelling to stare as the aircraft motored overhead. The two power-armoured figures in the load were unmistakable.

"Slay and Dark-Drinker come back," one of the other slaves stated in confusion, body so slick with oil he was cloaked to the night save for the reflection of the stuff from the surrounding flame torches. The initiate couldn't remember his serial number.

"But why?" another voiced.

The only reason the initiate could think of was that their base had been invaded and they were driven out. Maybe the Brotherhood had taken action! Maybe they were finally coming to save him and kill all these scumbags! Maybe Grace was among them. Sweet, caring Grace...

"Keep shovelling, maggots!" one of the guards grated on their ears, threatening to strike out with his giant flint-spiked war axe. Surprisingly, he wasn't the one that the initiate feared the most.

It was the brute with the enormous mace slung casually over his shoulder, the spiked wrecking ball swaying by its chain from the tip. He had seen an escapee slave become the victim of that, first with a blow to the spine, then a finishing bludgeon to the skull. The slave's head had splattered like a rotten melon. The initiate would rather take a war axe to the face any day.

As he piled on more dirt to clog the oil, he had to wonder what the setback in the Commonwealth would spark. From what he had gathered through slave gossip and rumours, the Dark Bloods had never been wholly driven back from their territory once claimed. Sure, the Red Claws had burned out smaller encampments and sabotaged a number of trails and routes, but never a large outpost.

They were going to be pissed beyond imagining.

As the vertibird inevitably soared in the direction of the Dark Bloods' main encampment, one of the guards, the one with the dart blowgun, gave a shrill call to the other guards.

"Make them go faster! We return to Blood Rock!"

The slaves exchanged looks of terror and shovelled faster. They all knew what this meant.

The first crack of the whip bit harmlessly into the air, the guard fear mongering. "First maggot to slow gets whipped!"

The initiate felt sweat ooze from his pores to meld with the thick layer of black oil on his skin. His back was already marred with whip scars, some still welted gashes that stung when he tried to sleep on his back. At least the incentive to shovel faster would help keep him warm in the cold desert night.

He thought of Grace, of one day seeing her again, and powered on.

* * *

Clay-Crawler watched from his prone position on the foot of his cot, curious, as his three leadership figures stood in a row outside his quarantine chamber down in the airport, which was really just a prison cell. All three looked menacing in their stoic authority; The Boss-Man had his arms at his back, The Dancer had his crossed over his chest, and The Whisper had hers on her hips. All three were staring at him.

He wondered why they were staring at him.

"How are you feeling, raider?" The Boss-Man began, his glacial eyes belying the courtesy.

Clay-Crawler sat up straighter and crossed his legs neatly beneath his form, not wanting to appear aloof to Boss-Man. He still admired his beard—revered it, even—wishing he could one day grow one just like it. "Feel good. Bit hungry. Arm sore." The laser discharge on Doom-Guy's part had left a big angry welt and was still throbbing beneath the thick bandages.

"We'll get a medic to change the dressing soon. As for your meal, I've heard that you are dissatisfied with our food quality. Is that so?"

The young raider picked up on Boss-Man's irritation despite his level tone, and felt a pinch of panic. It's not that he disliked the food, it just wasn't the same as sinking his teeth into ripe, oozing flesh.

He darted to his tray of unfinished food and scrambled to rip open the box of Dandy Boy Apples. A quick, keen-eyed snap of The Dancer's head drew his attention away for a moment before he shoved the sugared apple into his mouth and rubbed circles on his belly, moaning in feigned delight.

"No, no! Like food. Mhm. Yum-yum. Taste better than eyeballs. Orgasm in mouth."

All three continued to stare in silence, steadfast, mighty. Then The Whisper cracked and let out a strangled snort, turning her face away to regain her composure. The Dancer sent a glance to the ceiling and shuffled his weight to summon patience. The Boss-Man just bore into him with unimpressed eyes.

Clay-Crawler was about to reach for something else when Boss-Man spoke again. "We're here to ask a few more questions regarding the raider you called 'Doom-Guy.' Are you willing to comply?"

"Yes. Yes. Will help. Always help."

"Good." The Boss-Man sounded pleased, though he didn't look it. Boss-Man never looked pleased, now that Clay-Crawler thought about it. "I understand you were present when he took his own life to escape incarceration, specifically with your weapon in order to do so. That must have had quite an effect on you." It sounded less like compassion and more like disdain.

Unsure whether or not to confirm the tale that the Ghoul called Hang-Cock had spun in order to conceal The Whisper's torture, Clay-Crawler flicked his gaze to her. She scratched at her shoulder and adopted a guilt-ridden appearance, eyes framed by a sudden acute frown. The raider didn't understand why her torture of Doom-Guy was so bad, or why it had to be hidden from Boss-Man and Dancer. Torturing the deserving was good, wasn't it? Slaves and innocent—no. But bad men—yes. He had learned as a youngling that torture and threats of violence were the way a man asserted his dominance and gained rule and respect, and specifically, torturing to punish misbehaviour was righteous. The more grizzly the act, the more worthy the ruler.

Whisper would make a worthy ruler.

So why was she ashamed of it? She should be proud. He didn't understand.

But if it meant helping Whisper, then he was proud to serve. "Yes. Doom-Guy stole knife. My knife. Slit own throat." He re-enacted the false scene by slicing his thumb across the flesh of his throat, then produced guttural sounds of pain. Boss-Man looked perturbed and scowled at him.

"Uh, no, actually..." Whisper cut in. Both men at her side darted her startled glances. She bore them stonily. "It was my fault. He grabbed _my_ knife. I wasn't paying attention."

The Dancer frowned at her in confusion. "But Hancock said—"

"He lied." At Dancer's darkened frown, she quickly added, "To protect me. I was exhausted and shouldn't have been on the field. He was just trying to cover my ass." To Boss-Man, she solidified with, "It was my fault Doom-Guy killed himself. Not Clay's."

While The Boss-Man chewed on that, Clay-Crawler concentrated on the way The Dancer was looking at The Whisper. Confusion, disappointment, but more palpable was the hurt. Whisper was avoiding his eye while she waited for Boss-Man. There was something rippling under the surface between these two, the perceptive young raider discovered.

Boss-Man ground his jaw and broke the tension. "I suppose given your state down in the quarry, it's not surprising that the raider got the jump on you. This goes to prove just how paramount it is to be at your physical prime on the field. You should be ashamed."

Whisper did look ashamed, harried by it, but she held Boss-Man's glare like a warrior facing torture from dusk till dawn.

"While I'm disappointed with the outcome and the loss of potential leverage, what's done is done," Boss-Man spoke grudgingly, ending it with a sigh. He turned his focus back to Clay-Crawler. "Now, tell me what you know about the storms your people call Red Menace. I'm assuming it has nothing to do with the pre-war invasion forces that Harper had experience with in her time..." There was ridicule in his voice.

So Clay-Crawler divulged all he knew about the radstorms, most of which he had already told Whisper. The elder consumed it all with impassive attention, only moving once to dispatch a firm look to The Dancer when he heard how the skies could literally catch fire.

"This will pose quite an issue," he said lowly to his officer.

The Dancer only nodded darkly in agreement. Whisper stared at the two, obviously in the dark as to their exact meaning.

"For your vertibirds?"

The pair of men only afforded her glances, evading her attempt to verify.

Boss-Man refocused once more. "Thank you for the information, raider. I have just one or two more questions, then I'll have the doctor in to redress your wound and see to it that your next meal is more... satisfactory." There was a slight crinkling of his nose. "Doom-Guy. What did you know of his stature among the Dark Bloods?"

Clay-Crawler picked at his bitten nails. "Stature?"

"His value. His rank."

"Ah. Mhm. Had great value. Very important. Leader. High status, next in line behind Third-Degree."

"Third-Degree?"

Clay-Crawler shivered to recall that very man. "High Torturer. Best at job. Has many titles. Slave Bleeder. Father of the Dark Blood. Dealer of the Dark Deep."

"Their form of Hell," Whisper slipped in to Boss-Man.

"That should have been in your report, Harper."

"My bad. Slipped my mind."

Boss-Man only shook his head. "Well it's obvious that Doom-Guy was well esteemed. From what you know of the Dark Bloods, how likely is it that his demise will spark retaliation, and enough to incite some kind of vengeance? And, if so, in what form?"

The raider didn't even need to think on that. "Yes. Dark Bloods must be seen as top dogs. Never lose respect from enemies. Always take revenge for fallen leaders and prized warriors. Will attack. First, sabotage. Cripple enemy. Annoy."

Again, Boss-Man and Dancer locked eyes to share a grim, knowing gaze. Whisper looked overcome with regret.

"Thank you, raider. That's all the questions I had for you," Boss-Man closed the exchange, turning and making for the exit of the room with a stiff bearing. The Dancer followed in his footsteps, halting at the exit to look back on Whisper.

"Harper?"

She looked up and over at him, as if reawakening from a deep vision. "I just want a moment with Clay."

He hovered a moment more, eyes gauging her with a sort of mourning distrust as she dug her gaze back into the ground at her feet, waiting for him to leave. His eyes scooted warily, almost accusingly, to Clay-Crawler before he turned to leave them alone.

Whispered sighed quietly, then looked up to Clay-Crawler with a soft smile as she approached the bars of his cell. "You doing okay, Clay? That black eye Slay gave you looks better."

"Doing okay." He slipped off his cot and moved to the bars to get closer to her, clutching them in his fists. "Whisper okay?"

She huffed lightly, apparently surprised by his concern. "I'm okay. Much better, now. I'm sorry you ended up stuck in here. I tried pulling rank with Maxson to let you at least come up to the Prydwen with me, but he's got a barbed stick up his ass about you infecting his crew. It's bullshit, he knows you're not contagious. I think he's just keeping you in here to piss me off 'cause I keep pissing _him_ off. I'm thinking of accidentally spilling my coffee on him one of these days. Right down that beloved battlecoat of his..." She was leaning against the bars on her hip, arms crossed and gazing off at the near wall, lost in her ramblings. "Or maybe I could pull a classic and put a firecracker in his toilet. Or shave his beard while he sleeps. Hide cat shit under his bed. Draw a dick and balls on his forehead with permanent marker, but make the balls all shrivelled up and tiny, so everyone knows..."

Clay-Crawler pressed his face into the bars. "Whisper did the fuck with Boss-Man?"

Her brows lifted and she turned a slow, stunned look on him, favouring him with one eye. Then she gave a rough laugh. "You're fucking with me, right?"

His heart cantered and his groin jolted. "Yes. Whisper do fuck with me?"

More shock flitted across her face and she stood up straight, words tripping over her tongue. "Oh. Uh, no Clay. No, I meant, that you were kidding with me. You know? Like, just teasing me."

His heart slumped and his groin went limp. "Whisper not want fucks with me?"

"No. Shit, I'm sorry, Clay. I should have thought before I said that." She moved closer again, offering him a sympathetic smile. "Listen, I promise I'm gonna keep trying to get you out of here, okay? Just make sure you tell me if they ever do something to hurt you. They don't believe in torture, so don't worry, but just in case anything happens, tell me, yeah? I won't let them treat you like an animal."

"Why they not believe in torture?"

She blinked at him for a beat. "Because it's inhumane, Clay." A rueful quality fell over her then, and she gazed right through him. "Because it's an evil thing to do to someone or something..."

"We are evil? Like Dark Bloods?"

She brought her finger to her lip and gave him a sharp look, before whispering, "No. No, you're not evil, Clay. You didn't know any better. You were raised in a place where it's common and not frowned upon, so it's not your fault. Me, though..." Again, that distant stare. "I _did_ know better."

The raider frowned in consideration, confusion, this new concept of right and wrong blowing his mind. He had never had to think about violence as right or wrong before, just necessary or not necessary. Was this why the Red Claw leaders didn't agree with slavery? But even they had still tortured captured Dark Bloods for information. It didn't make sense to him. Was torture a necessary evil?

Seeing his inner ruckus, Whisper slipped her hand over one of his that enwrapped the steel bars. She patted at it fondly. "Hey, don't worry about all that right now. You're young, and you still have a lot to learn out here, so no rush. Don't go and strain that muscle thinking about this too much." She tapped on his forehead with a small finger and her drained features warmed in a smirk. He presented his teeth as he smiled back at her and gave a faint giggle at the way she then flicked her finger at his nose. "I'll come back tomorrow to see you. Any requests? Food? Entertainment?"

"Hmm." He thought for a moment. "Bring big metal armour?"

A chuckle thrummed in her throat. "I have a feeling that might cause a stir, buddy." She lowered her voice. "It might have worked once before to smuggle you out, but don't push it. Hell, maybe Deacon's offer to hide you up his ass is still standing."

Clay-Crawler sent her a repulsed look and shook his head in pleading denial, and she laughed. He thought again. There was one thing that needed to be done. "Bring blood of slain foes? For blood bond."

She seemed to consider this, eyes tender. "I might get a few sideways looks... but maybe I can figure something out." She flicked a wink at him and then broke off from the cell bars. "See you tomorrow, little man." Hang-Cock had called him that, too.

"Uh, wait!" At his outburst, Whisper stopped in her tracks and twisted with wide eyes, a little startled. Clay-Crawler suddenly felt overshadowed with unease and twiddled with the buckles on his oversized Brotherhood uniform—there hadn't been a size to fit his lanky body. "Um. Dog-Meat... Is okay?"

She drew in her bottom lip and stood silently a moment, processing or bracing. Clay-Crawler braced for the answer, himself.

"I think he's going to be okay," she finally said, then her lips curved in a soft, cautious smile.

She was gone in quiet footfalls, _whispers_ , leaving Clay-Crawler alone in his cell, with only the guards outside the door for company. He was lonely, bored, plagued by thoughts of home, revenge, guilt, confused by the idea of ethics, lost to his hunger for blood.

But he still smiled.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks for the love and support guys :')

 **Bianca (review on ch31)** \- Lol, no I'm not a psychologist, but I wish! I do study it, and I've always just been fascinated by psychology :)


	35. Crazy He Calls Me

**Crazy He Calls Me**

* * *

Ilya's fingers clicked monotonously at her Pip-Boy, taking on Hancock's high score at Red Menace. The wily old bastard had a flair for holotape games and had put her personal high score to shame, trumpeting himself as the 'king of menace' one time during a session of Jet, Mentats, and whiskey shots. His focus while hard out shit-faced was uncanny. She wasn't one to back down from a challenge, however.

Manipulating the vault boy in his treacherous yet heroic crusade to save the vault girl, Ilya had him charging through nuclear strikes, leaping objects in his way, scaling ladders, but no matter how much she concentrated, the little shit still sucked dick at it.

Damn vault girl. Grow some ovaries and save yourself, Ilya griped inwardly. Surviving the Red Menace in her past in the Sino-American war should make her sensitive to playing this game. Was it bad that she wasn't? Did it mean she was a cold-hearted bitch? Maybe. Probably.

 _You see so many things, kill so many people, that after a while you just block out your humanity in order to survive it. Become numb to it._

Like what she did to that raider.

Ilya clicked harder on the buttons and dials, willing the little shit on the screen to do cartwheels at her whim. Instead, he died. Growling, Ilya bashed at the side of her Pip-Boy in her ire.

"Not abusing that poor Pip-Boy of yours again, are we?" came Cade's mock tone from outside her unit.

Ilya cast him a scowl that he didn't receive from behind her privacy screen, and made no effort to respond. Despite his constant influx of taunts at her restless behaviour, he had been good to her. He never once spoke of her chem mishap, and never commented on how her collarbones would jut out of her skin when he made routine examinations of her heart rate and blood pressure. He would frequently tell her that her eyes were looking brighter, her dark circles were faded, her cheeks had more colour, her hands were warmer. He even told her one time while checking in after curfew that she had a certain glow about her, reminding her of how Nate would always say that when she was pregnant with Shaun. Whether or not any of that was true, she still appreciated it.

She did feel a hell of a lot better, though. Morning weigh-ins on Cade's scales told her she had gained at least a whole kilogram in a few days. It didn't help that she was up and about whenever she could be, wandering the Prydwen in a futile attempt to stave off her boredom and ease her anxiety at being wastefully unproductive. She may or may not have been keeping an eye out for any sign of Danse in his daily grind, itching to catch him off-duty and slap a beer in his hand, demanding he tell her that story of him and Maxson.

Though, they had yet to speak since she admitted to lying about Doom-Guy...

She hadn't caught any sightings of Star Paladin Groves, and figured the acidic woman was probably down at the airport, or off on some classified mission per Maxson's order. Either way, Ilya was just glad not to have to deal with her again.

Lynch had come to visit, if only over a coffee. Ilya wasn't really sure why the young woman was so eager to build a friendship with her, but she welcomed it nonetheless. They had chatted about her patrols, Duval's pedo-moustache, their shared love of coffee, and cats, specifically the ones roaming the Prydwen. Ilya discovered that one was called Deathclaw, and another Radcat. If only one was called Catmeat. Maybe she would embrace her inner kleptomaniac and steal one someday. Being cooped up in an airship was no life for a cat, and Dogmeat might like a playmate...

Because he was coming back, she told herself.

Also, Kells was a straight-up bullshitter, keeping Dogmeat from entering the airship due to cleanliness when cats were skulking freely. Maybe Maxson had been behind that little thorn of spite, too. The snooty asswipe.

Diverting her thought stream, Ilya had to wonder why a shipload of testosterone was fond of the cats. Probably because they were all so starved of pussy... Ha! She simpered at her own cheap humour, thinking Deacon had rubbed off on her, and then briefly wondered how the spy was keeping himself busy in her absence. Maybe he was planning that party in Sanctuary he had proposed to celebrate the raid.

Maybe she could talk Danse into coming along.

Anyway, where was she? Everyone in the Brotherhood being sexually deprived. That must be why all the NCO's and officers had such rigid sticks up their asses. Like Maxson. He probably fancied himself too high and mighty to commit to the lowly primal instinct of sex, and his temper suffered for it.

He was so tightly wound whenever she entered his awareness. One look at her and he was as coiled as a snake, all manner of calm obliterated as if she were a predator out for his blood. Admittedly, she _was_ going out of her way to piss him off until he backed down from his anti-apology policy, and also his spiteful campaign to keep Clay-Crawler behind bars. But lately, he was acting near on like a drama queen.

Like this morning. She had arisen early, roughly 0400, and dragged herself into the mess for some breakfast, intending on raiding the galley supplies to pilfer some Dandy Boy Apples and surprise Danse—essentially her solo run of their planned Operation: Apple Run. Only, she found Maxson lounging his length across two chairs, one elbow nonchalantly slung back over a third chair's backrest, nose buried in a pre-war book, languidly puffing on a fat cigar with a steaming coffee to compliment it, with a feline companion curled up on his lap. With the whole mess hall to himself, he was obviously having a luxurious time.

Her first thought was not that he shouldn't be smoking on an airship brimming with highly explosive gas, but that she had clearly caught him in his secret morning ritual. The scene was glorious, and so, so uncharacteristically _human_. Plus the cat on the lap was priceless.

So of course, Ilya had sought to embarrass the shit out of him and knock his imperial ego down a peg.

"So! Partial to the pussy, huh?"

Maxson had coughed on a plume of antique smoke and shot up out of his seat, the book dropped on the cat, the coffee spilling over the table, and the cat then flung from its perch with a startled howl. Ilya had fleetingly wondered if that had been Deathclaw or Radcat, and then wondered if he had named it.

Maxson had scowled at the mess and made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat before snapping his accusation at her. "Had that been completely necessary!?"

"I'm gonna go with 'no.' Spanking pussy with your hard-cover book seems a little too BDSM, even for you, Elder Boss-Man."

The look on his face... Ilya had fought tooth and nail to keep her composure as he stewed wordlessly with outrage, shooting her a twisted lip before stomping behind the galley bench for a cloth, and then stomping back to the table to wipe up the wasted coffee.

If only he had turned crimson with the humiliation, this golden moment would have been elevated to platinum, but Maxson was far too internally composed for that.

Despite herself, Ilya had felt a little cruel, watching him labour at the tabletop with his back deliberately to her in order to hide how this had affected him. Maybe he actually _had_ been blushing then.

So she had retrieved a cloth and come over to help him soak up the mess, but the moment she leaned in at his side, he had stiffened and angled himself away from her, swiping at the last of the spillage with quick, clipped motions before retreating.

Ilya had watched in surprise. "Maxson. Come on, I was just messing with you."

He had continued with his stomps, chucking the saturated cloth at the galley sink with more force than was needed.

"You don't have to leave..."

He had left. The hatch to his quarters slammed with resounding vigour, blasting the entire airship awake.

Back then, Ilya had felt unwelcome regret, annoyed by her guilty conscience. But now, she gleaned that he was just being a spoilt drama queen and had been throwing a tantrum at being the butt of her banter. Even Danse could hack her banter, and that was saying something.

So, her ultimate conclusion was that Maxson just needed to get laid. All that burning testosterone, that pent up tension, that dominant aggression, all of it just needed to be worked off somewhere, or more, on someone... Someone who could handle him, for sure. He was probably rather aggressive in the bedroom... a domineering tyrant... a vigorous machine... a durable beast... Not that she wanted to know.

Pulling her attention back to the present, Ilya rolled her neck and tended to her Pip-Boy again, cracking her knuckles and flexing her fingers. Right now, she just really wanted to beat Hancock's high score and win the right to gloat, maybe put up some Jet for whoever held the highest score at the end of a week.

But wait, she wasn't a junkie anymore. Right?

Ilya hadn't felt a single craving for Jet since Cade flushed her with Addictol. All the jitters, the burning in her veins, the scratching on the inside of her skull—all gone. It was fucking magic. And too good to be true.

Every morning she would roll over and freeze in suspense, eyes shifting the room on edge, waiting for the craving to creep up under her skin and trill in her skull. But it never did. It was both gratifying and unsettling.

The vault boy died again, and Ilya gave up with a loud sigh. Time to accept it. She sucked at this game. God damned Hancock and his stoner focus. He had an edge and it wasn't fair.

 _Would one hit really be so bad?_

Stop it, she scolded herself.

It was when she clicked off the holotape game that something other than a craving nagged.

A faint headache teased her temples.

Her skin tingled and bloomed with heat.

Nausea swirled around her.

Vertigo clutched her senses.

Her instincts told her she was being irradiated, and with a sudden powerful dose. But here? How? Was there something in her pack that was leaking? But surely Cade's equipment would have picked it up.

And then her Pip-Boy resounded with a telltale crackle. Fretting, Ilya peered down to check the levels.

Zero.

The shit?

But she could clearly hear the crackling. Maybe it was malfunctioning... but that didn't explain why she felt physically irradiated. With frenetic speed, she leaned down from her cot, ignoring the yank in the stitching to her bullet wound, and skimmed her hands around for her small travelling pack, hefting it up so she could rummage through its contents.

A backup sidearm and her small kukri in her holster, a hood and bandana, ammo and med supplies, purified water, a few trinkets and rations here and there, and one successfully pinched Dandy Boy Apples box for Danse. Nothing more radioactive than that.

Where in the _shit_ was it coming from?

And then a glissade of fear shot down her spine.

 _It will hunt you no matter where you hide._

Ilya's breath grew shallow as she froze in place, those words echoing from her nightmares to haunt her. Slowly, she dropped her gaze back down to her Pip-Boy screen, seeing the Red Menace title looping through animation.

 _Can't hide from Red Menace._

Spooked, she ejected the holotape and shoved it to the end of her cot as if it were poisonous, drawing her knees up to keep her legs as far away from it as possible.

She stared at it.

And then just as suddenly as it began, the radioactive crackle ended, and her symptoms ceased.

The silence gathered in mounting suspense.

Ilya remained frozen in place, tucked up securely, staring at the holotape. It was infected, contaminated somehow. By the Red Menace radiation. That must be it.

 _Oh god, it's here. It's hunting me. Just like Doom-Guy said it would. It's my punishment._

Paralyzed with fear, she waited. For something. She didn't know what.

Nothing happened.

 _Am I being stupid? Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe it's the last of the chems working themselves out of my system._

Feeling overcrowded by her inner monologue, Ilya kneaded her fingers into her forehead and then raked them through her rarely-cleaned hair. Was it hot in here? She focused on breathing in a purposefully paced rhythm, in through the nose, out through the mouth, like Nate had taught her that one time after she had gotten into a bar fight over the last of the peanuts, only to end up floored.

 _Calm your tits, Ilya. You're losing your shit. Nate would be disappointed._

She thought of the holotape he had made her with Shaun. She had only ever listened to it once, the first night out in the Wasteland, and then never again. She couldn't. It had destroyed her world all over again just to hear his voice, to hear Shaun as the baby she had cradled in her arms. She just couldn't go back there.

Her head weighed on her shoulders, eyes heavy-lidded, and just when she was about to settle back down in her pillow and drift off, Danse's deep voice resounded from outside her small unit.

"How's she doing today, Knight-Captain?"

Ilya didn't catch Cade's response, because her heart drummed in her bones and she lost her shit anew. Quickly, she snatched up the Red Menace holotape and stuffed it under her pillow. If it was irradiated, then she would make sure it wouldn't affect him.

"Harper? It's me," Danse spoke casually, if a little hesitantly, from just outside the screen.

"Hey. Come on in."

He did, shifting aside the plastic screen to grace her with his gorgeous, scruffy smile, that bomber jacket doing a fine job of emphasising the taper of his figure, from broad shoulders to narrowed hips. _Hot_ _damn._ She felt the weight leave her at once and smiled in return. The fact that he was bearing two cups of what she hoped was coffee also added to the effect.

"Coffee?" he asked politely, gesturing with one of the cups.

 _Fuck yes._ "Sure. Thanks." She took it in both hands to cradle its heat. Wasteland coffee tasted like ass, but at least it survived the war.

They both took a sip of their coffee in silence. Ilya then ogled the dark liquid in her cup, idling. Despite the comfort of his presence and his civil entrance, she knew he was here to give her a grilling about that lie the other day, about Doom-Guy's 'suicide' being _her_ screw up. That lie that was covering another, even more despicable lie.

So many lies...

Danse was eyeing her firmly. "Why did you lie, Harper?"

Disappointment, and straight in with it. So that's how he was going to deliver it. Fair enough. It was better than outright anger.

Ilya took in a breath and resigned herself, thumbs circling the rim of her cup. "Because I was afraid you'd think even lower of me." When he claimed the silence, she granted him her eyes, blinking out with a false mettle to cover her emotion. _Yet another lie._ Even still, she recognized sympathy on his brow as he considered her.

 _Oh no you don't. Not for me. Not for this._

"Look, I know I should never have let Hancock lie for me, or let Clay take the blame for that. It was low, really low. I disgust myself thinking of it. So I'm gonna work my butt off making up for it. Starting by telling you how sorry I am for losing your trust. Again."

He was quick to jump in with denial. "You haven't lost my trust."

 _I should have._

"Perhaps things did get a bit crazy down there, and you made some decisions that defied logic and safety, but you were exhausted and grieving, and not thinking clearly—not yourself. Like Elder Maxson deduced, it was no wonder that Doom-Guy took advantage."

"You don't need to make excuses for me, Danse. I shouldn't have even gone down there. I was reckless. Crazy, like you said."

 _Crazy._

Her hard tone gave him pause for thought. There was no way to justify that and he knew it. So he sighed. "Well, you've admitted to and learned from your mistake, and you're willing to rectify it. So no, you haven't lost my trust, Harper."

 _The man's impossible. I don't deserve his trust. I don't deserve him._

"Just, please," he went on in her silence, "don't feel the need to lie to me again out of fear of what I might think. We're partners, and partners stick together through thick and thin." He had completely forgotten his coffee during this, gesturing with it to emphasis the weight of his words, only to spill some of it across the deck. He spared the small puddle a glance but ultimately ignored it to fix his eyes back on Ilya.

She was pinned by them. "Wait, partners? You're willing to work with me again?"

Danse confirmed with a nod, stepping in closer to her cot with a rallying sigh. She gaped up at him, stunned, his nearness filling her with the warmth it always did. "I've had a lot of spare time to mull this over," he said, voice a low rumble, probably to keep Cade from eavesdropping. Even so, Ilya had to repress the electric shiver whenever he spoke to her like that. _His voice_ , she just couldn't help it. Blinking it away, she refocused as he went to continue his train of thought.

"The truth of the matter is, we make an excellent team, and it would be wasteful to throw that away over a few petty grievances."

Petty grievances? That's an understatement. Again, she refocused.

He was peering down into his coffee, sheepish or nervous, she couldn't tell which. Gradually, his brows drew in with some kind of internal conflict, then just as gradually, their tension diminished and he locked eyes with her again. "If you're willing, then I would gladly reapply as your commanding officer."

Ilya was lost for words. By the way he had come in closer like that, while openly vulnerable, it was clear he had thought about this for some time, as he'd just said. To witness Paladin Danse in a moment of willing vulnerability was a beautiful rarity and a thing to be cherished, but she had to address the red flag that was slapping at the inside of her skull. He was endangering himself, putting himself between her and the Brotherhood again. Since when was he so trusting, even with her? She had thought that their talk out on the Flight Deck the other day had settled their decision to keep their friendship tamed and uncompromising of their duties. He remained loyal to the Brotherhood through and through, and she remained a weapon for the people of the Commonwealth, nothing more. He was threatening that just by standing here defending the monstrosity that she was and offering himself up like this. He was doing it for her, because he could see she was crazy, when he should be _avoiding_ her because she was crazy. He never put himself first.

 _Oh, Danse._

She wanted to smile at him, to ease that knot in his forehead as he waited, unshielded.

 _You can't do this to him. He has no idea what you really are and what you're capable of. Be the friend he needs, nothing more._

She battled with a pained expression. For once, the dark presence was giving her sound advice. But how could she let him down easy?

Before Ilya could ruin the moment, a squire flung herself into the infirmary, panting and with cheeks aglow. "Knight Harper? Knight Harper! Senior Scribe Neriah sent me to get you, ma'am! It's your dog!"

* * *

 **A/N:** Still having too much fun with Maxson.

 **Bianca -** I'm so happy that you're so pumped for the Blood Lands, it just motivates me even more to pull some major crazy shit outta my ass once they all go there! Figuratively. :P


	36. Woman's Best Friend

**Foreword:** There's a lot to digest in this chapter so hold onto your butts.

* * *

 **Woman's Best Friend**

* * *

In her ears, blood pounded. Panic buzzed across her skin. Her heart thrashed a frenzy. What happened? What if Dogmeat couldn't be brought back? What if he was really gone? She had been shoving down the anxiety of it, concentrating on the alliance and her recovery, but now it was like Dogmeat's death all over again.

 _No, no, no, no._

Ilya followed the young squire, sprinting up the ladder for the upper deck, barely conscious of Danse in tow telling her to _take it easy, soldier._

Not a chance.

They had both spilled their coffees in their squeeze out from the infirmary, Danse giving the yelling Cade a sincere, "Apologies for the puddles," before hightailing it after Ilya.

When they arrived at the biology department, Neriah and Ketway were in the midst of a heated row while assistant scribes stood nearby, greeting Ilya and Danse's arrival with apologetic faces.

"It's just as much an abomination as a synth!" Ketway was flaring at Neriah, gesturing wildly at Dogmeat's prone form on a gurney. He was out of the cage, but the specimen was still attached.

"Nonsense!" Neriah flared right back. "You're blowing this way out of proportion!"

"You think so, do you? I think you'll find that Elder Maxson will wholeheartedly agree with me! These specimens are a plague, and that dog is now a by-product! Once we divine all the knowledge we need, it should be destroyed!"

Ilya caught her breath, appalled by the idea, ready to step in with a counter backed by emotion, but Neriah had a counter of her own.

"For goodness sake, Ketway. It's Knight Harper's dog! How could you be so heartless?"

"Quite easily. It's a _dog_!"

"He is _not_ just a dog," Ilya growled out through her teeth, entire body trembling with her effort to control her sudden spike in temper. He might not be human or even sapient, but he was part of her dysfunctional, rag-tag family, and when someone was part of her family, they had her fierce loyalty and steadfast protection. So when someone fucked with her family, they fucked with _her_.

Shit, she wanted to stalk toward Ketway, thump him right in the nose with her fist and watch him topple over in humiliation, and she would have done it, if it weren't for Danse's grounding presence at her side that kept her in check.

All attention was suddenly and silently on her.

"If you want to kill him, then it will be over my dead body."

Ketway's glower was a thing to bring that very prospect to reality. "As far as I'm concerned, _Knight_ , you're a rogue element, a deserter whom we owe nothing but your rightful death."

"Blow me."

Danse was in to slice the misconduct, taking a step across Ilya. "Rein it in, Knight," he warned with a low gravel to his voice. She met his glare and held her tongue. He then shot the same glare to Ketway. "I suggest you keep your opinion on the matter to yourself until Elder Maxson is present to decide, Senior Scribe."

Ilya reeled at that. What? He couldn't let Maxson have the final say here, he would likely come to the same conclusion that Ketway had. She took a step in. "But Danse—"

"It's Paladin, and I said _rein it in_ , Knight," he cut her off, turning a crisp scowl on her.

She recoiled and stood feeble, gaping at him in disbelief. Then digestion kicked in. He wasn't betraying her, he was just acting his rank, putting the Brotherhood first—as she had wanted him to. She had no power here, she wasn't a general or even his friend right now, she was his subordinate, and technically, a civilian, since she had yet to officially re-enter service. It hurt, but she understood... grudgingly.

Ketway was less inclined. "How you continue to cater to her devious demands is beyond me, Senior Scribe." Although that had been labelled for Neriah, who was his ranked equal, his eyes had lingered on Danse a scant moment too long for anyone to miss the real target of intention. If it had been directly addressing Danse, his superior, it would be mutiny. His gall was shocking. "You degrade yourself every time you support her. You should be ashamed."

The snap of Danse's head in his direction was sharp, carrying with it the full weight of his steel. Ilya held her breath. It seemed everyone did.

 _You don't purposefully fuck with Paladin Danse and get away with it_.

Ketway stood straight to brace. The paladin's stare brought the very air to a stagnant halt, a hush sweeping the decks that seemed to gather around the mounting of his retaliation.

But whatever words smouldered within him never had the chance to burst forth.

"And _you_ degrade yourself by failing to keep your brash tongue in check, Scribe Ketway." All turned as Maxson strolled across the walkway toward the open department, gaze as grim as ever to admonish them all their unsavoury behaviour.

Everyone straightened to attention. Except Ilya, of course. She propped a hand on her hip and traded a level eye with Maxson as he approached. As usual, his glance was a blank canvas. She was going into this scrap blind, without clear indication from allies or foes, even from Danse.

So be it.

"My humble apologies, Elder Maxson," Ketway attempted to smooth things over, actually looking a little horrified to be caught in the act by the elder himself. "Tensions have been running high around here, and I admit I allowed myself to fall victim to my lesser self. It won't happen again, sir."

Maxson retained his blank facade. If he was angry, he didn't show it. "If it does, consider yourself reassigned down at the airport until your 'tension' finds a way of relieving itself. This dog's fate is not yours to decide."

"Yes, Elder."

Maxson then spared another glance Ilya's way, so brief it was a mere flit, before he settled his attention back to Ketway and then Neriah.

What was that? Favour? Compassion? His cold eyes were hard to read. Maybe he had been scavenging her for a sign of appreciation, instead only receiving her severe case of resting-bitch-face. Whatever was in that glance, she opted to keep her guard up.

"Scribe Neriah," the elder summoned, "I believe you have some good news for us, despite it giving rise to this dispute."

Ilya then perked up with rapt attention.

"I do, Elder." Neriah smiled and looked to Ilya, and she was so full of pride and joy that Ilya's heart added another beat to its rhythm.

 _Please._

"I'm pleased to report that after our last full anatomical scan, all of Dogmeat's organs have been restored to full functionality, his cardiovascular and respiratory systems kicked into action of their own accord and are operating well above normal parameters, suggesting he acquired some side effects from the specimen."

Ilya scanned Dogmeat and realised that he was, in fact, breathing!

Neriah went on. "Right now, all we can observe is an increase in muscle density and a boost in electrolyte count, just like the others—we'll know more once the specimen has been removed and we can conduct more thorough scans. As for his brain, it's showing signs of healthy REM activity. The specimen is now just merely keeping him in a coma as the last of the paralysis wears off. Luckily, we've found a way to subdue the specimen in order to remove it without violent resistance, and we can manually bring Dogmeat out of the coma to assess his state."

By now, Ilya was glowing, both outside and in, unable to keep the full width of her smile from her face. They had really done it. They brought him back! A heaviness left her heart and with it the calloused shell from around her emotions. The beginnings of tears pushed behind her eyes.

While Maxson praised the scientists, Danse turned to glance at Ilya, a soft, supportive smile warming his features. She didn't think her smile could stretch any further, but it did.

"You should know," Maxson broke their shared smile, giving Ilya a pointed look, "now that we understand this development, this procedure will never again occur under the Brotherhood's authority. The act of bringing the dead back to life is a violation of nature, just as much a manipulation as the creation of the synths. This technology has already fallen into the wrong hands, and it reinforces the need to eradicate this specimen outbreak and put an end to the raider plague."

"There goes my 'endless respawn on death' business proposal," Ilya sighed jokingly, all self-control gone under her current glee.

No one laughed. Danse's head gave a miniscule shake. Maxson eyed her, deadpan. She cleared her throat and nodded to the elder's stark features. "I understand. Thank you for allowing this to happen."

He inclined his head, but his face remained the same deadpan expression. "Senior Scribe Neriah, you have permission to proceed." Ketway moved aside at the neglect, face sour.

"Thank you, Elder. Right," Neriah reined in everyone's attention as she moved closer to the gurney, plucking up a small syringe. "Shall we welcome our resident canine back to the land of the living?"

Ilya moved in closer, heart racing, anticipation thrumming along every limb. Maybe this was wrong, maybe it was playing god, but Dogmeat deserved a second chance. He didn't go down into that quarry understanding the full extent of the situation and the risks, he never got to make that choice for himself. He went down there because he had imprinted on her, and would follow her anywhere, on instinct, on blind loyalty. His death had been completely out of his control, and unfair.

In thinking that, maybe it had been wrong of her to take him down there. But then, it would be wrong to take him _anywhere_ with her. But he wanted to protect her, and he loved getting out and seeing the world. Was she just fearing a future impossible to predict? Was she just over-thinking the whole thing?

Neriah administered the contents of the syringe into the specimen's fleshy abdomen, drawing Ilya out of her inner warfare. Within moments, the creature's vice grip around Dogmeat's head grew slack, and several scribes stepped in to assist Neriah in gently prising it away, unwrapping its tendril-like tail from around the dog's neck. There was a splotch of dried blood on his fur where the creature had made its entry into his skull.

"Vitals are still in the green," a scribe reported.

Neriah glanced at the displays for herself, nodded, then reached for another syringe. "Let's proceed with the anti-sedative..." She pinched the flesh of Dogmeat's thigh, then injected the needle.

Ilya felt like her heart was going to leap out of her throat as they all waited for any sign of awakening. She might throw up, too, and she had to take a deep breath to compose herself and level out her breathing. Feeling a presence move up behind her, she peered over her shoulder to see the furred collar of Danse's bomber jacket, and felt grateful for his nearness.

Suddenly, Neriah indicated her pointer finger at Dogmeat's snout. "See that?"

Ilya leaned in for a closer look. She caught the twitching of his nose, tiny movements that meant he was picking up scents. His ears perked slightly. His throat rippled as he swallowed and then his tongue rolled back into a mouth that slid closed, only to slop as saliva worked to moisten up the area again.

"Come on, buddy. You can do it," Ilya cooed, tentatively reaching her hand out toward him but stopping to send Neriah a questioning look. The woman nodded, and Ilya placed her hand on Dogmeat's coarse, weathered fur, stroking him lightly.

A groggy, prolonged groan erupted from the canine, and he shifted his limbs before his eyes fluttered open, blinking and squinting in the harsh artificial light of the lab. With ears pinned back, he whined with uncertainty.

At once, Ilya darted around the gurney to face him, gently holding his head up and smiling at him as recognition dawned in his beautiful, devoted, intelligent golden eyes. His tail banged against the gurney with excitement and he rasped his dry tongue at her hand, still whining. Maybe he was in pain.

"Is he okay?" Ilya fretted to Neriah.

"Vitals all check out. His heart rate is only slightly more elevated than usual, but that could just be down to his pleasure at seeing you and being woken in a strange environment, or even his body's adaptation to fuel oxygen to the increased muscle mass. I'm sure he's fine, Knight."

Ilya focused back on Dogmeat, his eyes blinking drowsily at her, but the same adoration she had seen so many times before was unmistakable.

"My baby boy," she sobbed out, a tide of emotion spilling over without warning. She leaned in and pressed her face into Dogmeat's scruffy mane to hide the rise of tears, embarrassed, yet they wracked her body against her efforts to control them. He angled his head and tried to lick at her face, lapping up the salty tears, and she choked out a laugh. "You're back, you're really back. I missed you so much, buddy. I'm so sorry you had to go through all that, but it's going to be okay now. I'm going to take better care of you. You get a second chance at life." She pulled away and clutched his adorable face again, dodging his tongue as he persisted to lick her nose. "You lucky little fucker."

Several scribes chuckled quietly at that. They were probably all used to her profanities by now.

Tears continued to roll down her cheeks unchecked as she fussed over Dogmeat, crooning to him gently with nonsense and repetitive words of assurance, easing his anxiety. In the backdrop, she became aware of Maxson's apparent unease at the situation, unable to look at her as if her show of emotion disturbed or embarrassed him. He lifted his head from a seemingly courteous fixation on the ground, appeared as though he meant to say something, then ultimately decided against it and just turned to leave.

Whatever his problem was, she didn't care. She had her baby back, and it was going to be her sole focus to help him ease back into life.

If only she could have baby Shaun back, too.

While she pressed her forehead to Dogmeat's in their familiar, comforting way, trying to gather her breath and calm down, she felt a strong hand rest its weight gently upon her shoulder, moving with the heaves of her sobs. Ilya spun and buried herself into Danse's chest, wrapping her arms tightly around his torso, and feeling him give a quiet, startled grunt and a minor step back before he adapted. Slowly, his arms moved to encompass her, hesitant at first, but when her tears of happiness gave way to soft chuckles of disbelief at reality, his hold eased around her body into a mutual comfort.

Ilya realised this was the first time she had ever hugged Danse, and forgave him his tension. His body was warm, solid, and his heart pulsed in her eardrum with a hastened cadence—he was probably shitting himself wondering what the hell to do. She smiled into him and let her dishevelled hair hide her tears from everyone else.

After a moment, she felt one of his arms give way from around her. When she turned her head to track its movement, she watched him reach out to stroke Dogmeat under the jaw, and she smiled furthermore at the two reviving their bond. The canine accepted the hand without hesitation, knowing the familiar scent and applying his tongue to the man's arm. Ilya felt the resulting hum of delight vibrate through Danse's chest.

Right there, safe in his embrace as he petted Dogmeat, she felt whole again. She felt hope fill the void inside, shearing off the dark presence slice by slice. Dogmeat was back, Danse was here, the chems were gone, the Ghouls were saved and the Dark Bloods were pushed back, the alliance was in the works, and now the dark presence was subsiding. Was it all just too good to be true? Maybe. She didn't know. She just knew that it was good, and for now, it was true.

As her tears slowed upon her adjustment to reality, she sighed deeply into the warmth of Danse's chest and wondered...

 _Can I bring Nate back?_

* * *

Ilya was consumed by that single idea. That single hope.

Her grasp of the concept was hazed by sentiment, memories, emotions, and they all burned within her like a fever. Was it excitement or anxiety?

 _My god. Could it be possible? Can I have my husband back?_

For the first time since stepping out into the Wastes, Ilya desired to listen to the holotape Nate had made for her. She desired for the sound of his voice. She desired to remember the pain of it.

Suddenly, she felt nauseous.

Reaching out for the nearest lab desk, Ilya leaned into it and slung her head, closing her eyes and taking in gulps of air. So much to think about. So much to deal with.

Peering up through the curtain of her hair, she swept the biology department to check no one had noticed her faltering. Neriah was tapping away at her terminal, and several other scribes were busied in their playground of chemistry. She looked over to check on Dogmeat.

The resurrected canine had slept soundly throughout the night, only stirring once to sound-off with puppyish yips in his sleep and little harmless growls. Since Neriah insisted that he remain in the labs for monitoring for the next few days, Ilya had brought a sleeping roll up and camped out on the deck next to where a mattress had been laid out for him. Cade had protested. Ilya had ignored.

She had underestimated the psychological impact being brought back from the dead would have on Dogmeat; he was constantly on edge, skittish, cowered and whined when strangers so much as walked by, and he was extremely clingy to Ilya to the point where he was incessantly trying to be in direct physical contact with her. Neriah proposed he was suffering acute Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and may take some time to recover. Ilya felt solely responsible. She hadn't even considered this possibility.

Because of that, she wasn't going to leave his side for a single moment.

"You've been here all day, Knight," Neriah gently stated while Ilya was combing through Dogmeat's clean fur as he lay across her lap—the scribes had thoroughly cleaned his body after he had been brought aboard the airship. "Why don't you go get yourself something to eat and get some fresh air for a while?" The Senior Scribe looked genuinely worried as she loomed over Ilya and Dogmeat.

"I can't leave him. He needs me."

Neriah considered these words, her features weary from her diligent work, then crouched down with her and gave Dogmeat's mane a fond scratch. He didn't even raise his head from Ilya's lap. "I'm sure he'll be fine for a few minutes, and I'll keep an eye on him. I'll even get one of the squires to sit with him while you're gone." As Neriah slowly moved her hand up behind Dogmeat's ear, he lifted his head and sniffed diffidently at her gloved hands, and the woman smiled.

Ilya pondered, but then sighed, sharing Dogmeat's diffidence. Silently, she just ran her fingers over the crown of the canine's head, forlorn.

Neriah tried another angle. "I'm not going to lie. Cade's got me spying on you to make sure you're properly looking after yourself. I'm not quite as esteemed in the field of medicine, but I'm sure that included ingesting food, Knight." She gave Ilya a stern eye with that.

Food. It was so time consuming, unproductive. Her appetite had dropped off ever since tasting her first Wasteland meal. Ilya now understood Curie's point of view when she complained about the constant nagging of bodily functions.

She ignored Neriah's comment and swept her hand along Dogmeat's fur again. "Did we... do the wrong thing, bringing Dogmeat back?"

This caused Neriah to balk slightly, clearly not expecting the question out of the blue. She spent a long while just patting Dogmeat before answering. "Is this because of what Ketway said?"

"No. I couldn't give less of a shit about his opinion," Ilya snarled at the very notion of Ketway. "I mean because of the PTSD..."

Neriah nodded gently with understanding. Again, she took a moment. "It may only be short-term, what's called Acute Stress Disorder. The animal mind is not quite as complex as the human mind, but even so, it's easy to dismiss the idea of them developing mental disorders..."

"I didn't even think of this," Ilya admitted in self-disgust, looking upon Dogmeat as guilt welled. "Selfish," she then pronounced herself. "All I wanted was to have him back. I never thought how it might affect him."

"It's only natural that you took whatever measures you could to bring him back. You were grieving. Grief is a powerful thing to just be pushed aside for ethics or common sense." Neriah's hand shifted from Dogmeat to clutch at Ilya's shoulder instead. "Don't be so down on yourself. People tend to underestimate the delicacy of the mind and how easily it can develop mental instabilities. I think because we can't perceive it, we assume it's a rarity or even taboo to be affected, but really it's very common, and nothing to be ashamed of. Some minds are liable to ruminate more, dwell on things longer, or visualise past experiences more vividly than other minds, even that of an animal. We still don't know the exact causes."

While Neriah paused to accumulate, Ilya thought of how Danse dwelled on things, particularly his decisions and the resulting consequences. Behind his stoic facade, he was a very empathic man, and dare she think sensitive, despite his efforts to hide it, which made it all the more endearing when he revealed it—it was just another reason she was so enamoured with him. But did this make him liable for suffering PTSD?

Then, she realised her own place in all this. She already knew she was depressed and insane to some degree. The symptoms of PTSD didn't fit, despite her recurring nightmares of Nate's murder, but something in her mind was sure as hell broken.

Fuck, everyone may as well have a mental illness in this shithole of a world.

Neriah gave a dismissive shrug at whatever she had been thinking on and continued her fond petting of Dogmeat, seemingly quite content to be down on the deck with them. "There was no way of knowing how all of this would affect Dogmeat, Harper."

 _Would it affect Nate like this?_

Again, nausea claimed her as the weight of her world increased. Why couldn't anything ever be simple?

She must have paled, because Neriah gauged her closely and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Now go and get yourself something to eat and stretch your legs for a while. I'll look after Dogmeat."

Taking another long gaze down at Dogmeat, Ilya eventually nodded. "Okay." She looked back to the woman, feeling a sudden connection with her, tinted with gratitude. "And thank you, Neriah."

"Don't mention it, Harper." Neriah smiled and she gave Ilya's shoulder a final squeeze before standing to allow her room to do the same.

It took some persuasion to get Dogmeat off her lap, and a little more to get him settled on his mattress and accept the idea that she was leaving. He watched after her with longing eyes, and she felt cruel leaving him to tend to her own selfish needs, but when a squire sat next to him and lavished attention upon him, his focus was stolen and he rolled over for a tummy rub.

* * *

Coffee.

Majestic, heavenly, bittersweet coffee. The one drug Ilya could drown in, guilt-free.

Not keen on sauntering into the mess hall to be the victim of death-stares and whispers, Ilya instead steered for her infirmary unit to indulge her craving, keeping her eyes to herself, partly to avoid sparking social interaction, and partly because nausea endangered her balance if she glanced up too quickly. Food was the last thing on her wishlist. Just coffee.

Thankfully, Cade was absent. She gave a quiet sigh in relief and made for her travel pack propped up against the leg of her cot, digging her fingers in for what she would need. She always scavenged coffee tins wherever she could out in the Wastes, and always had a pre-made mixture in a sealed flask carried in her pack. Dogmeat had developed a taste for her coffee after lapping up what she had spilled one time, though she never indulged him. Caffeine was bad for dogs, made their hearts race and put them at risk of heart attacks. Maybe the smell of it would perk him up, though.

She pulled out the flask and set it aside, then retrieved her hotplate stuffed at the very bottom of the pack's contents. After checking the fusion cell, she clicked it on to heat up and placed the flask on its ring.

Then, she waited, sighing into the silence. She found her eyes wandering over to Cade's terminal, recalling the time she had found it a grounding object to focus on while confessing her chem use to Maxson and Cade, having dodged admitting to an actual addiction. Even now, the terminal seemed to have a nebulous pull on her.

Weird.

Maybe it was her subconscious hinting at her to get a general check up... or the presence baiting her to get a diagnosis for her insanity so it could gloat that it had won and had reign over her.

 _No. The presence is going away, leaving me just like the chems._

Her Pip-Boy rattled off a radiation warning, and with it, another wave of nausea.

 _What? Again?_ She snatched up the display to check, and blinked numbly when the readings showed zero rads. The warning cut its audio feedback.

An edgy breath rolled past her lips. Her Pip-Boy must be glitchy. Then she remembered the Red Menace holotape and fished under her pillow where she had stashed it.

It was gone!

Cade or a scribe must have changed her sheets and found it, or unknowingly bundled it up and thrown it in to be washed.

Less important was Hancock's disappointment that she had lost his favourite game, more important was the evidence that the holotape couldn't have been irradiated and spiking her Pip-Boy like she had thought.

So either there was a radiation leak nearby and her Pip-Boy was screwed up, or... or she was haunted? Hallucinating?

The ping of the hotplate snapped up her attention. _Coffee._ Desperate for the diversion, Ilya reached for the flask, her hand flecking at the heat before she switched off the hotplate and dug out a spare ceramic cup. It was a little grimy, but what wasn't these days?

Before the divine liquid could even hint her lips with its heat and flavour, nausea rolled her stomach furthermore. She halted the cup and grimaced into the sensation. Fuck sakes. Was she irradiated or some shit? Her damned Pip-Boy was useless.

 _It will hunt you no matter where you hide._

Ilya breathed harshly, not daring to move, eyes skipping over every feature of the room. It felt like there was an ominous presence in here with her, haunting her, looming in the corner and staring at her. Her next breath was held aloft in her throat. Her nerve endings screamed and the prick of tears arose in terror, utter _terror_ , every atom of her wanting to bolt out of the room yet fear held her in place.

 _Can't hide from Red Menace._

Her mind's scream escalated into hysteria and she fled the room like skittish prey, her body tight with terror, not caring that she lost some of her coffee in the process. She didn't even look back as she scurried as civilly as possible for the nearest stairway up to the next level, terror still pecking at her back as her hairs were raised in warning.

It was only when she reached the upper catwalk that she finally breathed easy, pushing air out her nostrils in an attempt to gain calm.

 _Is Doom-Guy haunting me? Was that his ghost down there? Was it the radiation, the Red Menace? Am I losing my mind? Am I truly insane?_ Petrified tears threatened her waterline again. _What's wrong with me? I'm so scared. So fucking scared and I hate it._

Ilya lingered up there for a long time, nursing her coffee, and her backbone, though it felt as though she didn't have one at all. Over time, she came to settle her weight into the railing and gaze down on the mass of soldiers and scribes below, finding an odd comfort in the humdrum of their economy.

Closing her eyes, Ilya just listened to the backdrop. The meld of chatter. The clinking of utensils. The clanging of machinery. The sibilation of soldering. Finally, she found calm.

For a tiny moment, she felt back home in the pre-war military, surrounded by likeminded people, people who gave a shit, who gave of themselves for the greater good, striving to serve the good cause and fight the good fight, born with a passion to make the world a better place and help the helpless. There was nothing better than being amongst your own kind. There was nothing more beautiful, more powerful, more honourable, than a selfless soldier.

Like Danse.

She forgot all about the haunting radiation.

When she opened her eyes, her vision panned across the view below, then caught on a pair of eyes watching her. Danse himself was in the maintenance bay by his armour, wiping off his hands with a cloth, staring up at her with an odd wistful expression. When he realised he'd been caught staring, his eyes flinched and he jerked his weight a little, but instead of awkwardly looking away, he owned his embarrassment and just smiled up at her, hand rising to give a subtle flick of greeting.

Ilya smiled back and returned the wave, watching as he turned back to tend his armour. Had he really been staring? She grazed on him contentedly in return, her eyes following the motions of his hands, _such firm hands_ , as he reached under the shoulder plating of his armour to fiddle with the internal frame, clicking something into place. When he glanced back up to check if she was still watching, another more playful—and cutting it damn close to flirtatious—smile spread over his grime-streaked face, though he still looked caught-out, and Ilya laughed at him. She flicked her head in a gesture for him to come up and join her.

 _Such a dork. Get your ass up here._

Danse accepted the invitation with a quirked brow and an uplift of the chin, prolonging his smile and shaking his head, probably at himself. She could tell by the puff of his chest that he had just chuckled at himself.

Ilya felt her own prolonged smile as she watched him ascend the deck for her. She yearned for his nearness, for the warming air he carried with him and his reassuring security. She yearned to be in his arms again and to feel his heat and heartbeat on her cheek.

"Enjoying the view?" he queried sportively as he came up beside her, that smirk still in place.

Ilya favoured him with one eye, trying to determine whether that had been a flirty prompt or not. With Danse, there was no way of knowing sometimes, and he had her at a disadvantage more often than not. She decided to be equally elusive. "Maybe. You?"

His head quirked to the side a little, wry. He had just picked up on _her_ flirt. "Maybe."

 _Careful there, Paladin._

Before it went too far, he hatched it down in proper conduct, redirecting his gaze down on the activity below them. "Ideal place to gain some perspective?"

"Something like that." Ilya sipped at her lukewarm coffee, reflecting on that terror that had gripped her less than half an hour ago. "Whatcha workin' on?" she asked to keep herself distracted.

"Just connecting some underlay wiring along the shoulder guard to prepare for a modification that Ingram talked me into." He was quickly engrossed in explaining the details to her, and Ilya braced for a barrage of tech-talk and manly love for machinery. She didn't mind though, she loved listening to him get lost in his passionate talks and watching the montage of expressions on his face. " Generally, I prefer to stick with the tried-and-true standard-issue specs of armour and weaponry; they're reliable in the field and less prone to malfunctioning, and there's nothing worse than malfunctioning equipment when you're in the thick of combat."

"Practical," she commented. He was the most practical person she knew.

He nodded his agreement and went on. "But Ingram was talking up one of Teagan's latest power armour modifications, and I figured I could at least field-test it and share my opinion. It's a tesla bracer for the right gauntlet, which will create a surge of kinetic energy upon landing a blow and should deliver a nice jolt of electricity on the target. Naturally, I was intrigued."

"Naturally," Ilya gibed, and he just grinned. "Maybe you could give me a hand modding my armour sometime, too? Speaking of, I haven't even been to tend it yet. Someone's probably stripped it for spare plating."

"I've kept it safe for you, don't worry," he told her with a reassuring smile. "That gauss-sniper prototype is still attached, if you were wondering."

"Maxson's still waiting for a report on that..."

He gave her a pointed look. "It's not safe to keep him waiting." When she only smirked rebelliously at the notion, he released a sigh. "So how's Dogmeat fairing?"

She smiled at his consideration. He seemed to genuinely care about Dogmeat's wellbeing, which was a shift from his previous regard of the dog. "He's okay. It might take him some time to adjust to everything though." She waited for his eyes to swivel to hers before she went in with her next words, wishing to gauge his reaction. "Neriah thinks he has PTSD."

A slight billow through his brows, slackening around the eyes, a ruminative blink, all illustrating his sensitivity to the news, but Ilya couldn't figure out if it was empathy or sympathy. Maybe her suspicions of him having PTSD were just out of paranoia and her protectiveness of him. Overprotective, probably.

"I'm sorry to hear," he offered tenderly, forehead crimping up. "But given time, I'm sure he'll bounce back with a new appreciation for life."

Ilya picked at her nails. "I hope so... I don't know what I'd do if he never recovers from this. It'd be bringing him back just to live out more days in torment. Cruelty."

She sensed the depth of his forethought as he studied her. He had never given any indication of his thoughts on the ethics of Dogmeat's revival, but he must have had an opinion—it was Danse. He had an opinion on everything, and rarely kept it to himself, especially when it concerned ethics. She knew he would deliver it with care, given their friendship and her obvious angst, but she still waited nervously.

"I know you didn't make this choice with the ends justifying the means in mind. You did it out of love and compassion, if a little blindly. You saw to it that Dogmeat got a second chance at life, and if he could, he would thank you for it. I feel certain that that dog wants nothing more in life than to be at your side and experience the full scope of life, and you gave that back to him. And, not only that, but his revival helped us further understand the specimens and their relationship to those raiders, which could in turn aid us in their eradication and save lives in the long-run."

Such conviction burned in Danse's eyes that Ilya found herself nodding along with him, spirited by his words. The fact that Danse, so solid in his morals, had not condemned her decision and was even defending it, put her at gratifying peace. Nothing could justify Dogmeat's suffering, but Danse was right in that aspects of her decision had great gains. She took what she could from that and resolved to get Dogmeat through this final hurdle as best she could.

"Thank you," she sighed. "God. How do you always know the right thing to say?"

Danse lifted a shoulder. "I think my recent track record would disprove that."

Ilya reminisced on their time out on the Flight Deck, and gave an agreeing shrug. "Point. Well, you still have your shining moments."

"I'm pleased you think so."

She frowned at his face, then gathered her uniform sleeve and reached up. "Here. Hold still."

"Hm?"

Gently, she wiped at the smear of grease on his cheek, suppressing a smirk as his cheeks made the faintest of transitions into scarlet undertones. Although she had cleaned it all off, she went in again with her sleeve over her fingers, smoothing slowly over his thick brow—he had no way of knowing. She cherished the feelings that touching him roused. He just gazed at her as he waited for her to finish, his pupils enlarged, and she probably dragged her stroke out for too long, but the savouring was worth his suspicion.

She pulled her sleeve away and showed him the grease stain. "Better."

"Uh, thank you," he managed, still stuck in the moment. Was he swooning? With a few blinks, he spoke again. Or tried to. "Have you... have you, uh..." Yup, swooning, she realised. Had he never felt the tender touch of a woman before? The thought was almost offensive, given his good-looks and... okay, well, his personality could be overbearing to someone who didn't know him well. She had certainly thought him a robotic asshat when they first met, despite swooning herself with her instant attraction to him and his confident masculinity.

Plus, he had been in power armour, and she had a fetish for strong men in armour...

Danse cleared his throat and pushed through, "... have you given more thought to our talk yesterday over coffee? My proposal."

Ilya remembered the bookmark in their conversation—his offer to reapply as her fixed commanding officer and rekindle their spec-unit.

Shit.

She had intended on turning him down to protect him from her crazy-ass self. She had a screw loose and more were wrangling themselves free, so he needed to stay clear of her blast zone if she was due to blast off to infinity and beyond soon. Her suspicions of him having PTSD just emphasised that importance even more.

Atom above, she was giving him a tornado of mixed messages. She was flirting with him and stroking his brow, and now she was going to turn down his attempt to repair things and take care of her?

 _He just wants to take care of me..._

Her hesitation struck him immediately. "Of course, I don't mean to make you feel pressured. If you wish that we remain as we are and continue our work separately, I completely understand and respect your decision." He was back in that text-book recital phase again. Ilya groped for words while he babbled on. "My offer was simply of a professional nature to utilize our proved efficiency as a team. As I had stated before, it would be wasteful to throw that away. But a lot has happened as of late and I want to make it clear that I'm not judging you or intending to downplay anything." He stopped, as if sensing he was babbling, expression earnest, waiting for her response.

After all that, how could she deny him? It would be cruel. But then so would letting him get close again.

Damn it. They were just too close. No matter how hard both of them tried to cool things off, they couldn't keep away from each other, and were just getting closer and closer. Putting aside the psychological repercussions of her insanity, there were also the professional ones to consider. They both knew how dangerous this was in their line of work, and not just because of the regs on the rank gap and the threat of allowing emotion to overrule judgment, but because of their wildly differing ideals and grasp on honour and duty. It was all just a clusterfuck of complications.

Danse was trying to conceal it, but he was hanging on her decision by a thread. Ilya's mouth flapped and she started to panic.

Then she just blurted whatever words came out. "Yes! Shit! I mean, shit yes!"

 _Ffffffffff!_

He looked at her weirdly. "Yes?"

"Yes," she repeated, feigning a smile.

"Are you sure? If you've had second thoughts—"

"No! Not at all!" _Kill me._ "Thank you for having enough faith in me to take me on again." _You have no idea what you're in for._ Mentally, she was kicking herself and wishing she could bash her head into the railings.

But the smile that then obliterated his worried furrows and lit up his face with pure happiness had Ilya in a trance. Her smile morphed into something real. He was glowing. He had really wanted this, and maybe not just for her sake, but for his own. Suddenly, her heart swelled and she wanted to grab him and kiss him, the world be damned.

 _Maybe we can do this. Maybe I can still work with him without dragging him down with me. I'll just have to not fuck up again._

 _Easier said than done,_ the dark presence sneered back. _You're going to destroy him. One way or another._

 _No, I won't. This will work. I'll make it work._

To solidify her thoughts, she thought of a way they could celebrate this, a kick-start to shatter any remaining ice around their bond. She remembered stumbling upon the recreation terminal down in the lower decks while she had been bored and snooping, and smirked at what it contained.

That's how they were going to celebrate.

Before Ilya could propose the celebration, a soldier in orange uniform plodded up the stairway toward them.

"Paladin." He addressed Danse first out of custom, then flicked to Ilya. "Knight Harper, Elder Maxson requests your presence in his quarters immediately."

"Did he give a reason?"

"He never does, ma'am."

Typical. "Alright. Thanks." Ilya waited for the soldier to leave, then cast a lifted brow at Danse. He lifted his brow in return and looked at her as if to say _better brace yourself, soldier,_ and she sighed at him.

"Into the breach I go."

 _And with fire I play._

* * *

 ** _Bee -_** I'm really glad you liked the Outcast Danse, I was a little worried people wouldn't like it, but I haven't been told off yet. Thanks for sharing your opinion :D


	37. Game of Thrones

**Game of Thrones**

* * *

When Danse offered to escort Ilya to Maxson's quarters, she had thought he was just being gentlemanly and feeling full of chivalry after they had just renewed their partnership. But the next few moments proved that he had an underlying agenda, and that she had severely underestimated his level of social tact.

Ilya thumped her fist once on the hatchway. "It's Harper." She wondered why Danse was still hovering on her six.

"Enter," Maxson's gruff voice ricocheted out.

She let herself in, Maxson standing from his central table to turn a tolerant look on her, only for it to then divert over her shoulder to Danse standing in the hatchway, purposefully preventing Ilya from shutting him out. The elder tilted his head with dry curiosity.

"Danse, this is a private meeting with Harper. If you would excuse us..."

Danse nodded along with his words until he could speak. "I came to offer my assistance, Elder, if this meeting is in fact in regards to the alliance with the Minutemen." When Maxson didn't deny the purpose of the meeting, Danse straightened his stance and secured his hands behind his back, much like Maxson did so often, canting his chin the slightest. "I believe my experience with both forces could be an assistance in negotiating the groundwork of strategic deployment."

Ilya gaped at him for a moment, then twisted back to see Maxson's reaction. He was carefully analysing Danse, eyes faintly narrowed as he held the silence with his unearthly calculation. No wonder Danse had braced himself like that.

"Very well," Maxson eventually granted, albeit with a wary note. His eyes were still fixed on Danse even as he pivoted back towards the table, a gloved hand gesturing to usher Ilya over. She moved around the table to peer down upon an array of paper scrolls, leather clad notebooks, several small maps, and a much larger chart splayed beneath it all. It was titled **REGION VP1D** , presumably in reference to Vault Prototype: 1D. Upon closer inspection, Ilya spied a secondary title in fine print beneath: **Rad Land**. She bit down on a smirk. Maxson really despised the dub and had obviously protested against having it labelling everything in giant, obnoxious print. She decided not to tell him that the raiders themselves called the region the Blood Lands.

Instead of trailing her eyes across the lay of the region, her peripherals followed Danse as he quietly moved across the room, taking up position at the far end of the table. Part of her recognised this as a habitual move for him, allowing him to directly face the hatchway and have clear line of sight in the unlikely event they were attacked—he was just that hypervigilant. But the other part of her recognised his overall agenda of even being here in the first place.

All three of them knew that Maxson was hailed as a brilliant tactician and didn't need a 'strategic advisor,' as Danse had played himself up as to get in here. As far as Ilya knew, the paladin was rarely involved in deployment analytics of this scale at all.

Yes, all three of them knew why he was really here: to try and keep the peace.

For whatever reason, he had decided to take it upon himself to mediate her and Maxson, and although Ilya felt a spike of irritation that she would now feel the need to censor her tongue, she also felt reassurance pooling in her stomach to ease her tension at simply being in the same room as Maxson. The elder must feel the same way about her, because his tolerance of Danse butting in on their meeting was surprising.

Secretly, Ilya was impressed by how the well-disciplined paladin had insinuated his way in here like that.

 _You slick devil._

She peeked up at him through her lashes as he stood silently, reviewing the charter, waiting for the tension to heat up so he could jump in and douse the two hot-headed negotiators.

Extinguisher Danse.

"As you can see, this is our cartography of the region beyond the Glowing Sea, pieced together from numerous ground-based scouting ops and vertibird surveys," Maxson supplied, plunging straight in with business. "It will be more updated from the version I installed upon your Pip-Boy. Scouts have done extensive mapping of landmarks and even cave systems, but with the area so densely overrun with raiders and unidentified wildlife, there's still a great deal to have mapped out. We've already had several KIAs and one op listed as MIA," he ended despondently, almost bitterly. It wasn't clear whether he placed that blame on the raiders, or himself. Maybe both.

Ilya nodded, though he had yet to provide her with a purpose to speak up. The Minutemen just weren't ready to gain a foothold in such territory, and they both knew that. Honestly, if she had known he was summoning her in here to talk tactics, she would have sent that soldier back to him with a denial. Dogmeat had just been revived yesterday and today had already been a rollercoaster for her, and she just wasn't up for this. Plus, there was no way in hell she was letting him manipulate her into sending her people out into the Rad Lands to be cannon fodder for his fully trained, armed, and armoured soldiers. Especially since he refused to make a public apology for using them as cannon fodder in the raid.

She straightened and folded her arms over her chest. "I thought you had a mission already lined up for me soon and you were just waiting on Doctor Li to finish... whatever her secret project is." They were still keeping her in the dark about that, though the giant inflated balloon down at the airport was a glaring tell that whatever was underneath was a colossal threat to their enemies. The pre-war governments had concealed secret military satellite arrays and bases just like that, but she doubted the Brotherhood was building a satellite to destroy the Institute. Not loud enough for their style. "Is there a reason for this sudden urgency to make a move in the Rad Lands?"

Maxson halted in place for a moment, clearly caught off-guard by her forward fishing. "I had expected you to be eager to advance in our negotiations, particularly after the success of your dog's revival. Surely you must be pleased with events and ready to return to productiveness."

Had he just admitted to hoping he would catch her in a good mood after that? He had purposefully waited until Dogmeat's revival to commence with negotiations, just to take advantage of her generous spirit and save himself from her temper.

 _Two slick devils._

Ilya let her arms fall away and concentrated vaguely down on the map. "There have been some complications with Dogmeat. He's having some trouble coping with everything."

"My condolences," Maxson offered neutrally. She nodded and spared him her eyes to accept his offering, but was surprised when she saw pity in his hardened features instead of the expected vacancy or even disappointment that his evil plan hadn't worked. Silence filled the room before he spoke again. "Do you wish to postpone this meeting for another time?"

Again with the compassion. Ilya had no idea where it was coming from and tried to get a reading from his pale blue eyes, to hash out if he was bluffing his compassion in hopes of postponing this for when she _was_ in a good mood, but only found herself staring into an impervious forcefield. She sighed and thought hard on his compassionate question, then shook her head. "No. We need to start making some waves out there. The sooner the better. Let's get down and dirty."

His gaze levelled out and lingered, with a slight angling of his head.

Poor choice of words. He obviously took this business very seriously. She issued a quick, pacifying smile.

Maxson blinked and nodded slowly, stepping in closer to the table again to regard the map. "As you wish."

Ilya checked with Danse in a discreet glance. He was eyeing her in warning, willing her to proceed with caution. She shot him a wide-eyed _sorry?_

Maxson gestured tightly to the chart again. "Now, in order for the Brotherhood to gain a more secure foothold in the region, we need to shift a substantial amount of our forces from the Commonwealth—a prospect I had strong reservations about, until our recent alliance." He lifted a stark look at her, as if grudgingly thanking her, before continuing. "Our presence in the Commonwealth must remain stable if we're to purge the Institute and their synth atrocities, which is where the Minutemen will contribute. Your people will hold the fort in the Brotherhood's absence, this includes securing our established outposts," he indicated with a calloused finger to several points on the Commonwealth map, "committing to regular patrols, and responding to any reconnaissance reports of synth activity. Of course, a skeleton force of the Brotherhood will remain behind in order to oversee this arrangement."

Ilya arched her brow at him. "Please."

A confused scowl hit between his brows. "I'm sorry?"

"It would be nice if you said please before demanding all that of my people."

His scowl was etched deeper. "Would you prefer I had them deployed out into the Rad Land region with us? From what I've gleaned of their capabilities so far, they would aid only as effective cannon fodder."

Ilya had to restrain her lip from twitching with anger. He had a nerve bringing that up. "Well, you're the one with the knack for using cannon fodder as your favourite tactic."

Five minutes, not even five minutes. Danse was already grounding his jaw with irritation as the pair wound up.

"How many times do I have to tell you, that had _not_ been my intention." Maxson's emphasis was edged in malice, already riled. It didn't take him long to rev up, as of late. Probably due to that cat incident. Or lack of sex.

"If you say so." That had been tame on her part, and she almost regretted it.

Danse was trading them both disappointed daggers. "May I suggest we get back on topic?"

They both identified his mild scolding and took it, though not before snarling at each other.

Maxson recovered his unscrupulous tack. "I consider my proposal to be fair, given the Minutemen's limited combat experience—they would be no match for the conditions in the Rad Land region. Do you agree to these terms or not?"

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Ilya knew she was pinned down with this. At this stage in the Minutemen's rise, they had nothing else to offer the Brotherhood but baby-sitting-tier fortifications. He was right, and she was thankful he hadn't planned on dragging them out to the Rad Lands where they would be completely out of their league, but she still expected him to meet her half-way with allocating manpower and resources.

"Before you give me the rundown of what you want and where, I have conditions."

A slack brow was domed up at that. "Oh?"

"This is an alliance, remember? Of mutual benefit? The aiding goes both ways. I'm not as endowed with intel or as strategically savvy as you, but I'm not an idiot." She ignored the way his raised brow then twitched as if to oppose that. "I want your fortifications in return."

His brow sunk to level out with the other, shading his eyes again to give her a flat look. "This defeats the purpose of ensuring the Brotherhood's presence remains stable while we relocate. I would have to pull more troops and supplies from the Rad Land campaign in order to fortify _you_ in return. I may as well forget about this alliance and just reallocate my own forces."

"While I want these raiders dealt with as much as you do, I'm not above pulling my support because of unfair treatment. You'd lose my future support and any other advantages having an ally might get you."

"I fail to see what advantage that would be."

Jerk. Ilya cocked her head, unimpressed by his malignant tone. "How about gaining favour from the local population? Showing your endorsement to our good cause? Securing a safe and peaceful future? Here's a big one: gaining more recruits?"

Maxson, surprisingly, recast his manner and looked at her curiously, apparently impressed by the challenge she was giving him. "Do you have past experience in politics that I'm unaware of?"

Ilya almost laughed, but she let a sportive smile grow. "My husband was a lawyer."

"Hmph. That explains a lot..."

They were veering off course again, but Danse wasn't tensing up like he had been before. He was watching their sudden crosstalk in bewilderment.

Maxson picked things back up, though his attitude had mellowed slightly. "What could the Minutemen possibly need these extra fortifications for in the first place?"

Ilya shrugged and affected a nonchalant tone. "Raiders, Gunners, muties, synths, ferals, wildlife, rogue bots, you know, the usual shit. Why, what does the Brotherhood need the fortifications for?"

Her point was valid and he knew it, simmering to himself at being caught in the act of trying to rip her off in this deal. "Fine. I'll have Captain Kells run some more numbers for reinforcements... You realise this will lessen our effectiveness in the Rad Lands."

She had a plan to bolster his campaign out there, but thought she'd string him along just a little longer. She was enjoying herself now. "Mhm-hmm," she hummed to dismiss him, moving in to plop her hands on the table to lean nearer, tilting her hair over a shoulder to expose her neck, making sure not only to push her hip out to one side, but to release a long, daringly sexual sigh in an attempt to throw him off his pragmatic focus. If he was as sexually deprived as she suspected, then this might work. Though he probably thought her more a pesky obstacle than he did an attractive distraction, but a woman had to play up her assets when in doubt, just as a man could play up his brawn to intimidate. Damn, she should have worn something to flash some cleavage, too. "So, give me your rundown, Elder."

Maxson stood and glowered, eyes narrowing at her, but cooperated, showing no sign of distraction and actually also moving to lean forward over the map with her. Much like her, he braced his weight on the tabletop, slowly, as if to emphasis the weight of muscle beneath his battlecoat and the release of their tension upon stretching them out. He then also sighed deeply, broodingly, out of his nostrils, so much so that she heard a faint groan in his chest. He even flexed his bearded jaw.

Was he... outplaying her?

Their faces were so unbearably close that Ilya could smell the lingering opulence of pre-war cigar smoke on him, along with faint notes of a rich musk most likely from some pre-war deodorant. Or was it actually cologne? The fusion crafted an irritatingly seductive aroma on her senses, and she found herself momentarily flustered—a complete backfire, since she had intended on causing _him_ discomfort with her nearness.

Had he worn cologne on purpose? A strange tactic to throw her off, but she wouldn't put anything past him, including lowering himself to her level of deviousness. It seemed he had been well prepared for this, and knew the effect his powerful presence had over women. While he was not a traditionally handsome man by her standards, he certainly wasn't _un_ attractive with his hardened sculpture, and his allure was in his dark, brooding aura of masculinity, so much so that his age wasn't even a factor. He was older than his years in every aspect, and as a hot-blooded woman, she couldn't deny what he possessed.

 _Fuck, he just played me at my own game._ She fought to steady herself and focus on his briefing.

Danse opted to stay out of it, keeping to his statuesque position and ogling the map from afar, safe from their shiftily sexual wargames. Though, knowing Danse, he was probably completely unaware of what they were trying to do to each other. Things were so subtle that anyone would be unaware.

Maxson dragged things on for a moment more by lifting his eyes to meet Ilya's, his brow bone a heavy ridge to shadow eyes that conveyed _You like to play games, then?_ She almost shivered.

He went in, as if the game hadn't changed at all. "Many of these postings can be withdrawn if necessary, though I would prefer to avoid that. The airport will be strictly off limits, along with the Cambridge Police Station. You understand."

Ilya only rolled her eyes.

"But the Cambridge area itself will need to remain secured. It's a cesspool of feral and raider activity that needs constant sweeping." He took a red marker and crossed the location for reference. His finger then trailed the map eastward, more slowly than was necessary, and Ilya found herself focusing on that large, firm finger, also more closely than was necessary.

 _Stop it. Now he's just pushing it and taking the piss._

"Bunker Hill, the trading outpost frequented by Wastelanders. We station patrols around the border of the region to keep raiders and super mutants at bay." He crossed that location, too. Next, his finger moved lower, slower. "Boston Commons. A gathering ground for raiders, and easy pickings for us... it's almost hard to resist." Crossed. Ilya flicked him a threat, and he hinted at a satisfied grin. When he reached the southern border, his finger rubbed a small circle on the last location. Ilya wanted to shove the table into his balls. "And the stronghold known as Gunner's Plaza. Obviously, the Gunners are fond of the location for setting up their operations. We sweep the site regularly to keep their activity contained." Crossed. Maxson then stopped cold and regarded her expectantly, eyes now conveying _your move._

Ilya took the time to swallow and regroup, nodding to stall. She swept her eyes to Danse, hoping to elicit some tactical advice from him and create herself time to think on how to counter Maxson's steep demands, which she should have been focusing on doing instead of letting him distract her like that. She considered grabbing that red marker and jerking it off in front of him to get even, then imagined them running around the room molesting inanimate objects to drive each other mad, while poor Danse crumbled into a facepalm, and she decided against it. Clearly she needed to get laid just as much as Maxson did... and somehow he knew it.

At the altered path of her focus, Maxson swept his eyes to Danse, also. The paladin had been pondering the map, hand under chin, oblivious to the undercurrent of the situation, but was now finding himself the object of their attention. His eyes darted between them and his eyebrows lifted expectantly.

"Paladin, would you like to provide further synopsis on the Brotherhood's activity and offer Harper your recommendations, given your insight on the Minutemen's capabilities?" Maxson prompted him. "You know the field better than I do, after all," he added.

Danse seemed to suddenly remember his pretense for being there. "Yes, sir." As Maxson relented his nearness from Ilya and stepped back, Danse leaned over the Commonwealth map, and Ilya almost sighed in relief at the welcome switch from oppressive challenge to pleasant support. "I'm not confident the Minutemen will be up to keeping the Gunner's Plaza secured; the Gunners possess far superior weaponry and armour, not to mention their militaristic training regimes upon recruitment. I think the Brotherhood will need to maintain a strong presence here."

Thankfully, Maxson nodded his acceptance. "Very well."

Danse caught Ilya's thankful glance and subtly inclined his head before moving on. "Boston Commons I believe will be within their capability to hold, provided they're aptly briefed on known hotspots and vantage points. Harper, your snipers should be able to set up a tight perimeter from the rooftops and keep track of activity for your ground forces."

That sounded doable. She nodded. "Long-range is my largest contingent so it'll take some selection, but they'll have it down."

The three moved through the Commonwealth to delegate their forces with surprisingly smooth efficiency. Despite his bullshit pretense for being there, Danse actually proved to be the backbone of the negotiations, providing Ilya with his recommendations on how best the Minutemen could fortify their outposts, and informing Maxson of where they might need assistance from the Brotherhood. His practical manner kept the two from employing further ruses against one another, and like he had intended, he was in fact mediating them. Patrol routes were marked out, outpost locations were selected, and Maxson's finger showed no sign of making a comeback to distract Ilya again.

Still, she knew that no amount of Danse's recommendations would shift the fact that the Minutemen would be out of their comfort zone trying to police the whole of the Commonwealth, even with Brotherhood backup. People were going to die, and there was going to be one hell of a mass grave to dig once the Brotherhood returned from their campaign. Maxson must know this, and Ilya wasn't going to let him walk all over her.

Once they had hashed out a good game-plan, she dropped her bombshell. "I'm in... but if you want the Minutemen to squat in your outposts and take up all that slack, then we'll need your resources. Power armour. Vertibird clearance. Weapons and armour, meds and ammo."

While Maxson gawked incredulously, she thumbed over the map on her Pip-Boy, raking her eyes across the landmarks that concerned her. "Some of our outposts are within night-cycle range of some mutie and raider encampments. The Institute itself might even come out to play. Once they realise the Brotherhood have moved out, they'll want a crack at testing the new residents. Things could get scrappy." She then flicked her eyes back up to the elder, who was still glaring at her, jaw tight beneath his beard. "We'll need schematics for your stationary defences, preferably your plasma armaments, and your engineers on hand for field repairs and maintenance."

Maxson's jaw was still clamped tight, striving to conceal his livid temper. He had obviously thought he was going to get away with leaving the Minutemen with the bare minimum. Danse's infamously emotive brows were raised as he kept his eyes locked to the table to stay neutral in this, either impressed or surprised by her cheek. Or both. The Brotherhood sharing their technology? Blasphemy. He was probably trying to figure out how he could mediate this one before it turned ugly.

Maxson finished stewing. "You have our reinforcements, is that not enough? Now you want our technology?" His hand cut the air. "Absolutely not. Out of the question."

"You're asking for the Minutemen, a civilian militia, to step into your shoes and run a marathon without shoelaces. More of them will die than necessary if they don't have the firepower and defences they need to step up."

"You just highlighted my point; they're a civilian militia, untrained and undisciplined. And you want to arm them with superior technology that they _do not_ understand and could _easily_ lose control of. Not only that, but they lack the deference that is needed when handling such technology. They are not toys, but things of great destruction."

His enunciation was amped up and his eyes were bulging to stress his point, heavily framed by his drawn scowl. Clearly she had triggered him with this mention of sharing technology. As long as she didn't use the word _synth_ , she might still have a chance at swaying him.

But Danse quashed any chances she had. "I'm inclined to agree, Harper," he delivered carefully, arms folded over his chest in thought. "The Minutemen will need proper training in order to use these technologies to their full potential."

Damn it. His siding with Maxson was the blow to end it. Ilya didn't bother to cover her sigh of frustration. She felt like a little girl being excluded from the big boys club of toys. They did have a point though...

If she couldn't win that battle, then she was going to win _this_ one. Her temper was equalled and the charm backfired, so time to pull out the sentiment, and connect it with that plan she had to boost Maxson's campaign... and gain her some pull out in the Rad Lands.

"The Minutemen are going to get slaughtered out there, Maxson. Like Danse said, they need proper training. So train them. Think abou—no don't scowl at me, just hear me out." His scowl did ebb slightly and he growled a sigh. "Think about this. Your people train up mine, even just a two-week intensive basic training regime, they get out in the field and get some experience, the shiners level up to some more specialised training with power armour and a higher tech arsenal, and then they ship out to the Rad Lands to bolster your campaign. They won't be front-line capable, unless," she coughed the words, "— _cannon fodder_!—but they'll be decent reserves. _Good_ reserves, if we're both willing to put in the effort."

Maxson was pondering, though his arms were crossed stubbornly over his chest. It was the first time she had ever seen him cross his arms instead of moulding himself into that regal 'at attention' stance. Then, he and Danse shared one of their weighty gazes.

The big boys were in.

* * *

Hours and coffee passed as Ilya, Maxson, Danse, and Kells sat around Maxson's table, shaping out an intensive training regime for the Minutemen; Maxson wanted this done and dusted so that his forces could deploy for their new campaign within two weeks. They went over everything from practical endurance and combat tests, to theory lessons on ranking structure and code of duty. Maxson insisted they be taught the importance of Brotherhood principle if they were to fight alongside his men and women. Ilya just hoped his idea of 'teaching' didn't involve indoctrination.

After Maxson and Kells had a one-on-one about when next to go over their battle plans for their Rad Land campaign, Kells took his leave, and it was clear by the way that Maxson lifted himself from the table and meandered over to his terminal that he expected Ilya and Danse to follow Kells' example.

Danse was well trained in his elder's nuances and rose to leave. Ilya, not so much. She reclined back in her chair and plunked her boots up on the table's rim, assuming a sharp lean. She pretended not to notice the way Danse pulled up short and gave her a wild look of warning.

"Good," she declared with an obnoxious sigh of comfort. As planned, it tugged at Maxson's attention and his head twitched from his focus on the terminal. She saw the cramp in his jaw even with his back turned. "So you can definitely expect the Minutemen to deliver on all this. _If_ you make that public apology." She heard Danse groan quietly in the background.

The elder tightened like a vice, turned, and when his raging eyes caught on the sight of her boots upon his table, there was a snap in the air. She smiled charmingly at him. He managed to refocus. "This again. I was _not_ waiting for your forces to thin the enemy lines in the quarry. Your sudden attack prompted my hand. We came to assist as quickly as we were able."

"You had been set on leaving us to rot fending for ourselves when I first asked for your help, so I find it hard to believe that you had a sudden change of heart out of nowhere. If it wasn't to preserve your own forces, then what? We both know you don't think the Minutemen worth shit enough to do it just for an alliance."

For a tense stretch, he only glowered to meet her challenge. "This discussion is irrelevant," he ground out coolly.

Ilya wasn't so easily cast down. "Was it to make yourself look good? To play the heroes in hopes of gaining the favour of the Commonwealth?"

Again, he stalled, then deflected with cautioning grit. "Your demeaning concept of the Brotherhood is beyond insulting, _Knight._ "

"I'm not your Knight, not yet. But if you want that to change, then you owe me your respect as your ally in this war. Starting by respecting my people and giving them the apology they deserve if you want them to man your post while you're gone."

The sigh he blew out was lengthy. "You would have to be the most stubborn, insolent, _vexatious_ woman I have ever encountered."

"I'm flattered. Now stop bitching about it and take your balls out of your man-gina and just fucking do it."

Danse flashed a sharp look her way. " _Harper_."

She swallowed her growl at being scolded and poured her focus back on Maxson, the stern man now leaning his weight on the end of the table. She was wearing him down. Good. She could tenderise her assault.

"Look, I may be their general, but not all of the Minutemen are die-hard supporters. I came out of nowhere, I have ties with other factions, I have personal stakes and my own agendas, I swear more than I need to, I kill people, I blow shit up, and I walk around with a ten tonne dinosaur on my ass." They both spared Danse fleeting glances. He just hoisted up an innocent brow. "They have no reason to trust me, they're just following me because I'm the only one stupid enough to let Preston Garvey shove the hat on my head and then hightail it so he could sit at home on his ass all day. Most of the time, I have no shitting idea what I'm even doing. So if I go back to them and tell them to step into the Brotherhood's shoes and risk their lives, you think they'll do it? They'll tell me where to shove it."

Maxson was still bowed into the table, his head slung and eyes fixed on the map as he listened. Ilya leaned forward from her recline and craned to catch his eyes. "Maxson, please. I _need_ you to give that apology, to show them that the Brotherhood does care and that you're here for the right reasons, or this isn't going to work."

"I doubt a single apology will win their trust," he murmured, resolve waning.

"It couldn't hurt."

A quick scowl reclaimed dominance over his features. "In fact, it could, by making the Brotherhood appear sly, manipulating our way into their favour in order to get what we want."

"... isn't that the truth?"

He hung off that and it somehow wounded him, his fists gathering into the table, and Ilya thought he might lash out, but instead, his fists slowly uncoiled and the muscles of his face slackened again. His murmur was even softer than before. "Do you really believe me so devoid of compassion?"

Ilya didn't answer. She couldn't answer. The odd fact that he was even asking her that aside, she honestly didn't know. He was an enigma.

"So why did you help us?" she deflected gently.

"...No matter what reason I give you for assisting with the raid, you'll just dismiss it and turn to the easy solution of anger and denial."

"Try me."

Gravely, he lifted her his pale eyes, and they were worn, swimming with feeling. Maxson could _feel_. They flickered to Danse, perhaps feeling insecure about divulging his feelings while another man stood in the room, and Ilya thought the moment might slip away, _he_ might slip away, but he surprised her. "Because I remembered your very first words to me."

 _"_ _I care about them, you know. The people of the Commonwealth."_

 _"_ _If you say so."_

Ilya remembered. She had stood on the observation bridge and listened to his sermon with a grain of salt.

Maxson exhaled heavily and straightened, chin jutted to amass his resolve once more, eyes still... feeling. "I don't expect you to take my words on faith alone. I don't expect any of my people to. As I discovered for myself long ago, actions speak louder than words."

Feeling at a disadvantage before this unpredictable enigma, Ilya receded into her facade of silence. For once, she was barren of tactic, just as vulnerable as Maxson was right now, but he held all the cards in hand.

He took a long moment just to dissect what endured behind her eyes, and she was about to split the silence with some type of inappropriate wisecrack to cover her discomfort, when he spoke in defeat.

"...You're never going to let this go, are you?"

A slow grin expanded on her lips. "Nope."

* * *

The very next day, their vertibird was embarking for the Minutemen Castle, carrying a disgruntled elder, with his smiling ally at his shoulder.

* * *

 **A/N:** Tehe...

-I don't even watch GoT, but I probably should. Not much of a tv person. Please don't kill me.

 **Bianca -** I think this chapter pretty much answers your question lmao!


	38. With Fire We Play

**With Fire We Play**

* * *

Their vertibird glided over the small gulf between the Brotherhood and Minutemen HQ's with a smooth bearing under Danse's hand. Although not officially established within lancer ranks, Maxson had suggested he be their pilot for the short trip, and the two men had shared an intimate grin at the prospect.

Ilya had watched their almost boyish trade-off from the sidelines, guessing it was some type of nostalgic inside-reminder to that story Danse still owed her of the two dabbling in the Outcast alliance. It was bizarre seeing them at ease around each other like that, even for a snippet of a moment. They must be closer than she first thought, and she made a mental note to keep a closer eye on them if the three of them were going to be a triad of war.

She couldn't have them both gunning against her.

Ilya stood in the troop hold overlooking the radioactive sea as it heaved below, choppy waves reflecting the morning sun. Salty mist infused with the familiar scent of wilderness filled her nose, and she welcomed it, breathing in deeply. It was refreshing to be off the Prydwen and back out in the Wastes.

The elder stood on the opposite flank of the vertibird adopting the same ritual, though his tension was palpable across the distance between them. He was not happy about this.

...and it made her very, very happy.

The only thing to frostbite Ilya's happiness on this little trip was the woman in power armour looming behind them both. Star Paladin Groves. Elder Maxson's stalwart bodyguard. Tendrils of her icy blonde hair rebelled from her rigid top-knot and lashed across her face in the wind. It was the only movement over a sullen backdrop of features as she stared Ilya down unblinkingly.

Ilya smiled pleasantly at her and flicked her chin up in greeting.

Groves did not blink. The bitch.

As Danse guided the vertibird into a low prowl around the Minutemen Castle for an appropriate LZ, Minutemen scurried about like army ants, taking up defensive positions and manning their artillery. Ilya had radioed in to forewarn of their appearance under 'political means' but she couldn't blame them for taking every precaution against the Brotherhood.

Did they still trust her?

"Alright, bringing her down," Danse alerted them as their altitude dropped to second him. The twin rotors buffeted off the dusty gravel and whipped up at the passengers as they dismounted, though all four were battle-hardened and accustomed to such minor inconvenience, eyes squinting through the sting of debris. They manoeuvred around to stand before the nose of the aircraft in preparation of the Minutemen greeting, Groves striding to her elder's forward flank with rifle in a taut cradle at her chest, casting out a clear warning to all. Danse had attached himself protectively to Ilya's left, one subtle step ahead of her, though he wielded no rifle to alienate the militia. Why he was assuming such a protective guard against the Minutemen, _her people_ , she had no idea. Maybe just his typical hypervigilance. On her right, Maxson himself looked on edge, though Ilya knew it wasn't because he felt threatened by the Minutemen.

Through the collapsed fortress wall marched Ronnie Shaw with two men on her flanks, all three of them clad in traditional Minutemen attire, from the dusters to the rawhide hats. Ilya strode forward to bridge the remainder of the gap, wearing what she hoped was a cordial smile.

"General," Ronnie greeted, a fissure of wariness in her tone. She regarded Ilya with a once-over, maybe checking for evidence that the Brotherhood had held her against her will and beat intel from her. Or, maybe checking for a tattoo of a sword and gears to symbolise her new allegiance. Ilya had adorned her stitched and patched vault suit to appear neutral for that very reason.

"Maxson, Ronnie Shaw—my second officer after Preston Garvey and our volunteer staff sergeant. She was with the original Minutemen, and she knows her stuff. Ronnie, Elder Maxson... that pretty much sums him up."

The two only exchanged tolerant glares. Perhaps Ilya could have been a little more professional, but fuck it. She was a soldier, not a politician, damn it.

Ronnie took on a puzzled look. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see you're well and all, General, but I'm a tad on the wary side right now with these gentlemen at your hips. No offense intended, Danse."

Danse inclined his head politely. "None taken, Shaw." The two had always been a little prickly with each other, mostly due to a clash in tactical teachings. Ronnie never took too kindly to Danse offering his opinion on how to spread the Minutemen out across the Commonwealth when Ilya had been at a loss, and Danse had been his typical arrogant, defensive self.

Ilya tried to soften her apparently intimidating image with the big boys on her flanks. "It's alright, Ronnie. They might look like they want to kill you, but it's just their resting faces. They really can't help it." She felt both men shift their heads ever so slightly to glance at each other over her head. "Groves, over there, though. I can't speak for her." With an indicative glance from Ilya, Ronnie peered across her shoulder at the star paladin who stood off to the side, eyeing the Minutemen from their blind spot. "I haven't figured her out yet." That earned Ilya a chilly eye.

Ronnie turned back to Ilya. "What's this all about, then, General?"

To that, Ilya grinned. "The elder has something he would like to share with everyone."

* * *

Oh, he was not in his happy place right now. Ilya observed from the Castle grounds as Elder Maxson stood atop the central wall, waiting for the crowds of fighters, farmers, and technical workers to assemble and settle. He stood with his usual iconic bearing, stance asserting confidence, the pillar of supremacy he always was. Patient, he may be holding himself as, but his face and the play of his jaw said otherwise.

Danse was eyeballing her at her side. "You're enjoying yourself, aren't you," he observed.

"Is it that obvious?"

"Blatantly."

She gave a rogue chuckle.

Once the gathering settled and an expectant calm ensued, Maxson waited for every last individual below him to silence, reminding Ilya of how her pre-war school teachers would do that, relying on their domineering presence alone to gain order. The man knew exactly what he wielded.

Finally, he spoke. "I'm sure many of you already know who I am and what I represent, but for those of you who are uninformed, I am Elder Maxson, of the Brotherhood of Steel." His emphasis was heavier on what he represented, rather than his title and name, Ilya noted. Maxson allowed a brief pause for respite as a murmur swept through the crowd, then he severed it, untainted by its effect. "While I'm both well aware, and dismissive, of your regard of our presence and cause, I make no claims to justify them before you all. Ruthless, prejudiced, or imperious, you may call us, but we do what we must for the good of mankind, for our future generations, and for our planet. That is our duty. That is what sustains us."

Harsh, but honest. The murmuring dwindled. Despite herself, Ilya was intrigued by his handling of this.

Maxson absorbed the response his words elicited, his eyes gliding over the mass below him, cool and calculating. "The Brotherhood's arrival upon the Commonwealth was for the purpose of liberation, from the Institute, and from all forms of tyranny. Which is why we have made it our personal duty to abolish the raider uprising. By now, you all know exactly how much of a threat this uprising poses to the Commonwealth. To all of us."

Another pause, and Ilya observed the atmosphere more closely. People were wearing scepticism, but they were listening, and no one had made an outburst to challenge Maxson yet. The Minutemen were unruly, and a rowdy bunch at the best of times. Impressive.

"So, your general and I have agreed to collaborate on the defence of the Commonwealth against this abominable scourge,"—Ilya garnered many questioning eyes with that, and she realised she probably should be up there with him to show her support—"though it has been a... trying process." Maxson angled an accusatory look down on her. "Not only do your general and I have a great many opposing qualities and ideals, but so do our forces." His gaze snapped off her to the crowd again. "I won't coddle this announcement; our alliance will not be easy. There will be disharmony at first, friction over differing opinions, perhaps even outright conflict, but if we let these trivial things splinter this alliance, then we _fail_ in our duty to the Commonwealth." His fist animated his disapproval in a downward stroke, and his voice darkened a shade. "And in the Brotherhood, failure is not an option."

People were nodding in miniscule detail, maybe not willing for their agreement with such a notorious figure to be known by their neighbours. Ilya noticed that Danse, however, was nodding avidly to the elder's every word, standing tall and proud at attention.

Maxson was only hitting his stride, warming to his address before this 'rabble of farmhands.' He began to pace slowly with conviction, hands at back, each step a purposeful design of his pitch. His regard of the milling audience was of ambiguous intent. Ilya felt herself tense in wariness. "I presume many of you share a similar outlook. Why else would you be here, serving for your homeland." His hands gestured out the rhetorical question with open palms. "As brothers and sisters of creed, we have a duty not only to instil trust in one another, but to build upon the foundations of our strengths and to fortify our weaknesses from outside forces." His pacing altered direction, back to where he had originated. "It will take time and patience to identify these strengths and weaknesses between our forces, time and patience we may find ourselves hard-pressed to find with the rate at which these raiders expand, but with diligent cooperation, and a firm resolve, I believe we can form an effective resistance." He gathered that belief into a symbolic fist, and his pacing came to a sudden halt. "One that may endure throughout the future of the Commonwealth, and possibly beyond."

His lull for reverie created an eerie hush through the Minutemen ranks. Distant gunplay split the morning air in constant Wasteland lament. The surrounding waters crashed against the shore in soft backdrop. Ilya waited with mounting suspense for someone to suddenly let rip with a debate, and maybe Maxson had been waiting for it too, welcoming the challenge, but no one did. They all seemed deep in their reveries that he had allowed them. Would they go for this alliance after just one speech?

"But first," Maxson captured the implications with a booming return, "we must focus on integrating our ranks, and working alongside one another in harmony. This will be the crux to our success. The Brotherhood has agreed to offer combat and weapons training to those of you who wish for it. Opportunities to contribute further in this war for your lands will arise with the more effort you put in. I'll let your general and her advisors provide you with the necessary details on how to pursue this... I sincerely hope you all take into account what I have said today, and that each and every one of you is willing to put your best foot forward to achieve our shared goal, and to ensure your lands are safe from this uprising." With a subtle inclination of his head, Maxson then parted from his pedestal to begin descending the steps down from the wall.

The finality of his speech was anticlimactic, which was odd for Maxson, and the Minutemen didn't clap or cheer, but they also didn't object or criticize. Ilya also breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't tied it up with an _Ad Victoriam_ as the cherry on top. As the wind of his speech settled and people fell away or mingled to begin their aftermath of chatter and gossip, Ilya suddenly felt embarrassingly inadequate as a leader. No way in hell she could ever deliver a speech like that.

"Damn, he really went all out," she mumbled colourlessly to Danse.

The paladin smiled in proud agreement. "He has a knack for improvisation."

"He's good, I'll give him that."

"You have no idea."

Ilya slanted him a curious look. He was just smiling ahead, as if he didn't know how she was staring at him. He knew this was Maxson's way of redeeming himself, and that she was chafing from it. She narrowed her eyes into him. Was Danse... _enjoying_ their ongoing power struggle?

Then it hit her. _The slippery motherfucker!_ Ilya bristled with sudden fury. "He never apologised."

Danse said nothing and just stared ahead into nothing, his smile stooping into a smirk that he failed to suppress.

She lanced her exasperation at him. "You think it's funny?"

"...a little."

Ilya crossed her arms and stared Maxson down as he drifted back over to them, wending easily through the crowd as they parted for him swiftly, as if he were some god whose anger was incited by a single peasant touch.

"Don't think I haven't noticed," she chided quietly to keep from making a scene.

Maxson had anticipated her reaction, quick on the defence. "The goal was to unite our forces. I think it's fairly obvious that's been set in motion, just as you wished."

"You're a piece of work, Maxson."

He quirked his head, but his eyes retained their stale regard. "A vice we seem to share, Harper."

Ronnie edged in on their subtle hostility, keen to break it up. "Well, Mister, er, Elder. That was quite the speech. It takes a mighty effort to sell these boys and girls on new ideas." Maxson said nothing. She switched to Ilya, elbowing her with an impressed smirk. "So this is what you've been doin' up there in that boat, eh, missy? Took ya long enough to bag this alliance. I didn't think you had it in ya."

Ilya chuckled. "It took some sweet-talking... and then some." She caught Maxson's eyes slit at her in miniscule detail.

"I'll bet," Ronnie chirped. "Well it sounds as if we have a lot of work that needs to be done. Whatdoya' say we put our heads together and pin down some of the details now since you made the trip special and all?"

* * *

More hours and more coffee passed as they all sat around the table in the general's office, sharing the deployment plans and training regime with Ronnie and several Minutemen tacticians. Preston was hailed over the radio from Sanctuary to give his input. Deacon somehow got a hold of his radio and stalled the whole process for a good ten minutes with his chatter and banter, eventually asking after Ilya, Dogmeat, Clay-Crawler, and even Danse. When he passed on the good news of Dogmeat, it sounded as though the entire settlement was hovering nearby when they burst out into cheers and clapping. Then there was a minor scramble of static, grunts, and yells until Cait's voice, intermingled with Piper's, MacCready's, and Hancock's, took dominance. She demanded to know if Ilya was 'bein' a good girl', covertly referring to Jet, and Ilya barely had time to reassure her before Deacon snatched the radio back to hand it off again to Preston, who was far too docile to wrangle it back himself, especially from Cait. She could still be heard cussing Deacon out in the background. Something like 'shitey bald molerat.'

Atom, they sounded stir crazy. Ilya hoped they hadn't trashed Sanctuary while she was gone, or that Deacon's party plans hadn't gone awry. Despite the annoyance, it was good to hear their voices.

After one more round of coffee, they finished up their talks. Maxson was eager to be underway for the Prydwen to get Kells up to speed and delegating his officers their duties to kick-start this training regime, as Minutemen were already packing and gearing up to trek for the airport. He perused the rallying with a slow, scheming gait, and Groves stuck to him like a tick, her every step a reflection of his movements, even the slightest shift in his weight was equalled by a shift in her demeanour, ever the guard dog to shield her master from these mud-squatting savages.

Danse also seemed pumped with proactive blood, skimming his sharp eyesight over the Minutemen preparations and telling them they wouldn't need to bring this and that, but that they'd need this, plenty of that, less of that, oh maybe some more of that, and that the Brotherhood would provide for its own. He already acted as if he was running the show, and Ilya wouldn't be surprised if he got the gig to whip them all up into shape. Poor them.

Ilya wanted to stay longer. She wanted to unwind and bask in the makeshift atmosphere that the Minutemen diffused, to lounge out in the sun with an ice-cold beer and share battle-stories with her comrades, compete in a half-assed kickball or rugby game, shoot empty bottles and make the loser streak across the Castle walls yelling obscenities they would never live down, then get way too wasted and play the most childish game they could think of. A dance-off. Truth or dare. That always had them gagging on their beers with laughter.

But no, war was afoot. They couldn't afford to celebrate this minor victory just yet. And she was a general, she reminded herself. Whether she liked it or not, these people looked up to her, for reasons she couldn't fathom. She had to step up. Because if she wasn't careful, Maxson would step up in her place and consume the Minutemen into his own ranks. His performance today made that a very real threat.

Just another thing to add to her pile of stresses. She picked a bad time to get clean of the Jet.

As they were ready to depart for the vertibird, Ronnie caught Ilya by the arm and waited for the Brotherhood company to pace ahead out of earshot.

"You just watch your ass with that Maxson fellow, General. I was keepin' a close eye on him today, and caught him eyein' you up a few times with that dark stare of his. Like you were a piece of meat."

Ilya wasn't sure if she meant he thought her something rotten and worthless, or a sex object. She didn't know which was worse. But by the way her attempted charm had backfired off him earlier, he wasn't attracted to her at all. That or he had impeccable self-control. "I can handle him," she feigned poise.

Ronnie gave her a straight look. "I'm not so sure he's a man that can be 'handled.' I hope you know what you're doin' gettin' involved with him. You're playin' with fire."

 _With fire I play._

* * *

The night was black as soot as the clouds wreathed the stars, only a few peeking out to greet her. Ilya lingered out on the Flight Deck, something that had developed into her routine ritual before turning in each night.

Dogmeat sat near her feet sniffing the secrets of the Wastes in the wind, now able to go without being in direct physical contact with her. He still padded along at her heel as a constant shadow though, and as much as she loved him, he could get under her feet and really piss her off when she was working with the Minutemen trainees down on the ground. He reminded her of Deacon, actually.

As she had predicted, Danse was overseeing the physical side of the training sessions. It was just a temporary position to keep him occupied while they waited to be assigned on their next mission—Kells obviously knew how restless the paladin could get with nothing to do.

Danse was working the trainees hard. Mercilessly, almost. She would often just lean back and watch him work, snapping out his orders in barking intensity, prowling the lines in rigid stride as Minutemen slaved away in their strength-training. Although he adopted his dark air of ruthlessness, Ilya could tell how much he loved his job, how it filled him with a sense of pride when the trainees succeeded. When wielding his authority, it was like he snapped on this new persona, this steel idol of valour that was both cold and afire, embodying everything the Brotherhood aspired to. It made Ilya think back to when she was first initiated into the Brotherhood, how stone-cold and untouchable he had been toward her, and how in awe she had been of him.

Now, he was just Danse. Yes, he could still beguile her into her shell if he came at her in his full confidence, and he could still burn her with his fire when he put her in her place, but she knew him now. She knew the soft spots in that flaming heart of steel.

The breeze sighed lightly in her ears, and she inhaled deeply, reaching a hand down to scratch at Dogmeat's mane. She felt the canine twist his head back toward the railings, and she peered over her shoulder to see what had drawn his eye.

A figure was approaching her with a calm, wandering step. Shrouded by the dark, she couldn't identify who it was, and hoped it was Danse, summoned by her thoughts.

It was Maxson. The nature of his approach kept her tension from spiking, but his very presence still roused her caution. She turned back to watch as the night swallowed the city ruins.

His heavy step on the decking preceded his voice. "It's dinner-hour. You should claim your rations before only scraps remain."

Really? Ilya rounded him an amused look. "You came all the way out here to tell me dinner's ready?"

His brow twitched to hint at mirth, but he was otherwise dry upon dodging her wit. "Your recovery is progressing well. Knight-Captain Cade seems pleased with your results and feels you should be fit for active duty when the time comes." She nodded and said nothing, and he ogled her sternly before expanding. "Have you used again during your recovery?" Suspicious and critical.

Ilya's reflex was to be enraged that he had the nerve to ask her that, and so plainly, but then realised it was his right, both because she was aboard his airship, and because of the possibility of her returning to duty.

"No."

Maxson gauged, and Ilya endured, and then they broke gazes, finding refuge in the night.

He was still standing right behind her, making no effort to spark conversation or even bring up something about their work to fill the silence. The muscles of Ilya's back began to tense up, dangerous potentials dancing through her thoughts. Was he considering pushing her over the railings? Shooting her in the back? Using his bare hands to strangle her to death to feed his need for dominance? Or worse, and even more frightening, that he would take her out here, on the railings, where death was a single scream-for-help away. She was a mere twig against his brawn, and he could easily overpower her. Though hating herself for it, Ilya admitted to herself that she was afraid of Maxson. On instinct, her hand covertly drifted for the handgun at her hip.

"Your guard dog... Dogmeat. He looks well."

Ilya blinked and turned slowly. "What?"

He looked at her as if she were stupid. Maybe a projection of himself for saying something so... friendly. "Your dog looks well. How is his recovery?"

She blinked twice more, then glanced down at Dogmeat on reflex. The canine was content, just watching the exchange and showing no sign of anxiety at Maxson's presence, or response to Ilya's tension at his presence. Ilya would have been proud of him if he were instead growling at the man in warning, but no one was perfect.

"He's doing good. Still a little clingy and skittish around strangers. He freaks out when he hears rumbling noises, like passing vertibirds along the hull, but he's getting used to it. Neriah's still keeping a close eye on any developments from the specimen."

Maxson nodded, and then he dared to step up beside her on the railings, seizing the opportunity of her dropped guard. Ilya rigged her body language not to show her tension. He settled his hands on the rails, and said nothing. If he was trying to negotiate a truce, he was flumping. If he was planning a murder, he was succeeding in the psychological factor of intimidating his prey.

As the silence grated on her nerves, Ilya decided to chase up a loose end she had been wondering on. "I'm guessing Danse told you about our decision to reform our unit?"

"He sent in his request, yes. I will approve it, pending your re-initiation."

The nuance in his tone told her he was getting impatient waiting for her decision. She gave him silent kudos for his restraint against badgering her. So he wasn't here to murder her, at least.

"Thank you," she mumbled awkwardly. He just stared ahead into the dark of night. More silence. "The chems... why haven't you told Danse?"

Maxson's stiff profile didn't so much as flicker, his hair, beard, and lapels of his coat the only victims of the breeze. He took his time. "You had told me it was an isolated lapse in judgement. I didn't think it necessary to inform him."

Something was off. Maxson went above and beyond when it came to text-book regs and consequences. Ilya didn't need to decipher his body language and expressions to know that. "Why are you covering for me?" she pressed straightly, tone level.

A pulse along his jaw. There we go. His brow deepened and he darted a look down at her from the corner of his eye before looking back outward. Then he sighed. "Think of it as that box of chocolates you once requested."

She grinned slowly, looked away, and then gave a small chuckle in disbelief. He may have been suppressing a smirk, but the scruff of hair on his face did its job of concealing it. Ilya felt herself relax an iota. "You know, I was serious about that. A man with your power should be able to have chocolate found pretty easily."

To tolerate that, he fed her a civil look, easing the usual hard fixture of his face. It was probably the closest thing to camaraderie she would ever get from him.

"But seriously, I appreciate it. I think we both know that Danse would have my head if he found out."

That hard fixture returned after that, and he levelled his gaze on her. "I hope your appreciation of my lenience will keep you from repeating your mistake. Danse is one of my best officers, perhaps _the_ best in his field of dedication. I won't have his reputation and wellbeing further tarnished."

That was elder-talk for _fuck up my paladin and I'll fuck you up._ The two _must_ have some kind of history or bond that she had missed along the way; Maxson was displaying his protectiveness of Danse in full colour, willing to expose a soft spot before her. _Danse must really mean a lot to him._ She had been right in thinking that he viewed her as a threat to the paladin's welfare. Ilya bore his warning in equal respect. He was allowing her a second chance with Danse, and she was grateful.

"I understand. I won't let this affect him again. It's not going to happen." _It won't. It won't. It won't._

"Good," Maxson accepted. "Though of course, none of this will matter if you refuse to re-enter the Brotherhood in active duty."

There was the badgering she had been waiting on. What did she really have to roll around on? Sure, she was the leader of her own force, but a force that barely paralleled the potential of the Brotherhood. Sure, the Brotherhood was full of bigots and was a militaristic dictatorship, but their goal was noble despite their holocaust methods, and with this new alliance, she may have some influence. Could she change their ways? That was a mighty hike of an ambition, but early days and baby steps. She could spark a civil war if she didn't watch her step.

 _With fire I play._

And then there was Danse. She couldn't deny that her sentimental reasoning to support the Brotherhood was him. She would follow him to Hell itself.

With fire borne of resolve, Ilya straightened up and looked Maxson square in the eye. "Knight Harper, returning to duty and standing-by for new orders, Elder." She slipped on an impish grin, unable to tame it.

Maxson failed at taming his reaction, in kind. The wash of triumph over his features at her sudden decision was unmistakable, no matter how quickly he schooled it. "Outstanding, Knight," he praised her loudly, reminding her of Danse, and she had to tame her grin from exploding into a full-blown smile. She wondered who had picked it up from who, before Maxson enhanced his praise with a rigid Brotherhood salute, fist pounding against his chest. She mimicked it, though less forcefully to spare her breast tissue the abuse.

"I'm curious as to the reasons behind your decision," he implored upon releasing his salute.

Ilya drew a thoughtful sigh. "Put simply, your speech... got me. I believe in your vision, in what the Brotherhood stands for; the goal to protect humanity from itself. Your people would die for that, and for each other, and people like that are rare. I have the Minutemen and I believe in their cause, but you were right when you said they're a young uprising and are still vulnerable to outside influence. The Brotherhood has more potential, experience, and ingrained belief behind it. You have the scope of the entire world in your sights, not just your country or your piece in it all, and the world needs that."

There was a spark in Maxson's eye that she had never seen before, maybe fascinated surprise at her worldly vision that matched his own. Maybe he finally saw a woman worthy of being his ally in her, instead of a girl playing at being a big bad general. Because of this shift in him, Ilya refrained from mentioning that the Brotherhood only had humanity in their scope. That's where the Minutemen had a leg up on them. "I lost my old world, so I'm gonna fight harder to keep this one alive. If we can compromise on our views, then this alliance has the potential to change the world, if we choose to take it that far."

She surveyed his absorption of that. Maxson nodded again, but his eyes lost their fascinated glint. She chased it before he could speak. "During your speech, when you said that our alliance could endure throughout the future of the Commonwealth, and beyond... did you really mean that?"

He studied her for a beat, then his face hardened into diplomacy. "The synergy of our forces throughout the coming war will be a trial of that likelihood."

That was a convenient dodge. Ilya nodded to cover her suspicion. Whatever his intentions for the future of the Minutemen, she would keep her guard up. For now, they just needed to focus on keeping the Commonwealth safe. "So... should I address you as Sir and Elder again from now on? Unless we're taking care of alliance business, of course."

"You should," he confirmed. Ilya had meant it as a quip, and she had no intention of going back to proper address under him, but he either hadn't picked up on her wit or just ignored it. Her good-humoured smile died a cold death.

"Sure. Okay. We should keep things professional... sir," she collected herself awkwardly. This was going to be a tough habit to fall back into. Not to mention humiliating. _Suck it up._

"To further clarify, not only will you adopt proper address and decorum, but you will refrain from using offensive language at your usual rate and in unacceptable situations, you will treat your brothers and sisters with the respect they deserve, and you will expect no special treatment from anyone, unless you are summoned on official business as my ally. Is that understood, Knight?"

He was really milking this. Ilya ground her jaw and forced a taut nod. "Yes, Elder."

"Good. As your first assignment, I would have you report on your field-test of the gauss-sniper prototype. It's been long overdue."

She then picked up on the tinge of pacifying sentiment in his manner, and then the glint of irony in his eye. Ilya grinned her amusement. "Yes, sir. Where should I start?"

* * *

Per his order, Ilya departed the elder's company in pursuit of dinner. Hunger gnawed her like a pest.

"Go see Neriah, boy," she encouraged in a sprightly tone, letting Dogmeat know he wasn't being sent away as punishment. He barked his acknowledgement and trotted off happily, and Ilya knew he associated the bio lab with plenty of loving attention from squires.

The mess was always a clusterfuck at dinner hour, the Brotherhood had no regs to dictate mealtimes, so naturally, everyone flocked in at 1800 hours. Unless the NCO's felt like being asshats and kept their juniors on duty. Ilya had dealt with that bullshit countless times in the pre-war military.

She braced herself for the swell of people and inevitable social interaction, and eased into the area, first scoping out the crowds before the food on offer.

Danse wasn't here.

Ilya hadn't realised how much she had been holding out to see him until she felt the weight of her stomach fall. Shaking it off, she ventured over to the counter, ignoring the way certain people shifted aside with glares to scorn her presence. She gritted her teeth and quelled the urge to shove her middle finger up in their faces.

"Feral," someone muttered at her back. _You fuck._ She crushed her fingers into her palms. _Don't make a scene. That's just what they want._

With a tray of 'shitty mess' and a cup of ass-tasting coffee, Ilya searched for somewhere to knuckle down, but, again, clusterfuck.

So she headed off for her infirmary unit with her tail between her legs, something that felt downright alien to her. Sure, she could have demanded to know who had spoken out, brought the entire room to a halt, and either challenged whoever came forth or given some choice words to the whole crowd if no one owned up, but what would that have gotten her? Surely not their respect, she felt that ship had sailed long ago. She wasn't an inspirational speech-maker like Maxson, and her tongue tended to get away on her. No, it probably just would have earned her more enemies, and wounded any efforts she could make in uniting these bigots with the Minutemen.

Besides, now that she was officially in service again, she was just another dog on the leash to them.

This was why the leadership role left her jaded. Responsibility and restraint. Not her forte. How Maxson did what he did, always so guarded with his emotions, day in and out, it was beyond her.

Cade greeted her appearance with an expectant eye, following her movement toward her cubical. "I hope that's not all you've had to eat today, Knight."

"No," she lied, slumping down on her cot. "Maxson just gave me the all-clear, thanks to you. So thanks."

He returned her smile and tipped his head, softening his appeal. "How's Dogmeat doing?"

"Better. Not one hundred percent, though."

"Hmm. Well, it must have been quite an ordeal for the poor dog. I'm no animal psychologist, but I could observe his behaviour for you and offer some pointers on how to help him cope and put him at ease. It could speed up his recovery."

Ilya pondered him for a moment, his sincerity. He seemed genuinely keen to help out, not just offering out of principle. Cade really was a diamond in the rough. "I would actually really appreciate that. Thank you, Cade."

He nodded and mirrored her smile, as if it wasn't a big deal. "I'm due for mealtime, so I may as well stop in to see him before grabbing a bite to eat. I prefer to wait-out the initial crowd in the mess, anyway."

Ilya figured most of the officers shared that preference.

She shovelled down the first of her meal while watching Cade leave her alone, sipping half heartedly at her coffee while deep in thought. She wondered what Danse was up to while he waited for the mess to lull.

Knowing him, he was probably hard at it with the weights or sweating out a swimming pool doing suicide run drills down at the airport after a long day of making the recruits do just that. She remembered when he had got her joining him one time in a training exercise, running back and forth between two cones with a squad of grunts, over and over and over for an hour straight. That had been back when he had first roped her into the Brotherhood, and she hadn't been nearly as fit as she was now. By the end of the hour, she was flat on her stomach, puking what fluid she hadn't sweat out, and she wasn't alone.

Danse, however, had finished not only on his feet, but _light_ on his feet, and with only a single layer of sweat to shine up his sculpted muscles and make them all look like puny weeds. He hadn't been pleased with any of them, barking at them to run to the showers. Not walk. _Run_. The bastard. She grinned at the memory.

But now, she would bet she was fitter than he was. She knew she could beat him in a straight-up sprint, but once she got her body back to its prime, she was going to challenge him to an endurance circuit around the airport.

Then they would see who was crawling to the showers...

Her thoughts warped into smutty fantasies of jumping him in the shower, naked, wet, hot steam rolling off his taut, throbbing muscles, _dat ass,_ and then, shamelessly, something else that might be taut and throbbing... She bit at the smirk on her lips, but then it faded as her thoughts travelled down more present, realistic routes. She couldn't get Neriah's words on PTSD out of her head.

With Cutler, and then losing his recon team, Ilya reviewed Danse's past experiences with a fresh perspective. It was obvious that he felt extreme guilt over taking Cutler's life, even to the point of questioning what the Brotherhood had taught him on mercy killing; that in itself was a red flag that it had really shaken his core. Losing his recon team, especially with his order to Haylen to put that injured soldier out of his misery, could have reawakened the old wound of Cutler's death.

Suddenly, something clicked, and it made her blood run cold.

Oh god. The heist escape. The vertibird and those soldiers she shot down. No wonder it had hit him so hard and he had turned on her like that. Had he really blamed himself for that?

Bringing her hand up to her mouth, Ilya's mind scoured through his qualities that could be symptoms, from what she had witnessed in the military seeing fellow soldiers go through the same torment: The way he blamed himself for everything, the angry outbursts when faced with similar situations, the avoidance of reminders, the hypervigilance, his extreme protectiveness over her and anyone under his command, the nightmares he would constantly jolt awake from when she was on nightwatch, or all the times he pretended to be asleep when she knew he couldn't sleep. It all fit.

Even if he was liable, she was fabricating all of this out of her ass.

Her eyes skimmed gradually to the Knight-Captain's terminal.

If Danse's symptoms had been interfering with his duty, he would have bitten the bullet and sought out Cade for an immediate diagnosis and solution. No doubt about that. He would never put other lives at risk.

But she couldn't. It would be an invasion of Danse's privacy. He had told her about Cutler, his recon team, and even his past with the Outcasts, she should be thankful he trusted her enough with all that. If he really was dealing with PTSD, and had chosen not to confide in her, then that was his choice, and he would have his reasons. No, she couldn't snoop through his medical files.

 _Yes you can._

Nope. Not gonna happen.

 _Yes it is._

God damn it. With guilt in advance, Ilya dashed across the room in a mere nanosecond and was accessing Cade's medical files. This marked the second time she was thieving something from him, the first being Clay-Crawler, and she did feel bad... just not bad enough.

 **Medical File DN-407P [Ongoing]**

 **Paladin Danse**

 **Patient symptoms included inability to sleep and a "dull throbbing pain in head." All standard tests are negative. Evidence suggests post-traumatic stress disorder or similar issue. Until severity of issue increases, recommend voluntary removal from active duty. Patient was informed, but is currently in the field.**

Her intuition had been right. "Shit, Danse..." Ilya breathed in heart-wrenching pity for him. This report only stated mild symptoms, but what if it was worse and he just hadn't elaborated? He could have been going through silent, lonely hell this entire time and she had had no idea. The thought made her sick with guilt, made emotion catch in her throat and risk her eyes with tears. And he just wanted to take care of _her._ He was so strong, so resilient, so selfless to have been hiding this the whole time without a sole to confide in. _Danse..._

Void, she clicked off the terminal and wandered listlessly back to her cot, nestling her coffee with hands that were numb of its heat. He obviously didn't want her involved in this, for reasons that were his own, and that was his right and she would respect his privacy... from now on. But that didn't mean that she couldn't find ways of helping and supporting him without his knowing. She nodded to herself with purpose. She was going to be his guardian angel from the shadows.

Starting by cheering him up...

* * *

 **A/N:** The contents on Cade's terminal is in-game. Whether Bethesda meant for Danse's symptoms as secret depth to his character with battle-fatigue, or just as a hint to him being a synth, since a lot of them have headaches and odd dreams (which could be why he wasn't sleeping) I'm not sure.

-I only realised after reading back that it went from _hot, heavy, sexy-time hinting_ jarringly to _just kidding,_ _heavy_ _mental issues!_ Sorry for any cold turkey reactions there...

 **-AboveReality** – Lol our Maxson is a mystery... :3 I'm glad to hear you're not opposed to the idea of Maxson/Ilya though :) I'm still on the fence about where it will end up and gauging off reader feedback, so for now I'm just having fun with them :P

 **-Bianca** – To your latest question on ch 36... mehbeh... :P


	39. Come Fly With Me

**Come Fly With Me**

* * *

 _It was back inside him. Visceral, condemning, torturing. In the deep grotto of his memory, it crawled back up to shatter his great fortress and render him its prey once more._

 _Danse drifted through his own distorted memory, tearing up air and land in search of Cutler. Blood and sweat was spilled, sustenance cast aside, emotions threatening to betray him each night he closed his eyes on an unsuccessful day. Mornings came with anxious sickness, kept at bay only by the will to push on._

 _The hive._

 _Danse remembered it vividly. Death and gore, red and rage, fury from the blood. The sight terrorised his eyes in sharp, fractured memory, flashes stabbing into his brain like a knife and latching on to etch out the images that would forever haunt him._

 _Human beings, mutilated, severed, dismembered, hung up in gorebags and strewn across the walls, their gore spread in decoration. The filth of it saturated his airways. His every step was over bloody bile, the sound unforgettable._

 _Squelch. Squelch. Squelch._

 _He was stepping on people. He could be stepping on Cutler._

 _Shadows assaulted him and his squad. Heavy footsteps penned them into a tight formation. Mutant laughter boomed off the gory surrounds._

 _Danse roared his battlecry as the hive awakened._

Dark. Sharp pain in his head. Sharp pain in his chest. Can't breathe. Cold. Shivering. Soaked in sweat... Nightmare.

Danse heaved in air as quietly as his desperation would allow and dropped back into his pillow, staring up at the steel ceiling above him. He was in his quarters, not the Capital Wasteland, he soothed himself as he fought to steady his breathing and the painful palpitations on his ribcage.

He loathed going back to that hive. That dreadful, despicable place, and where it eventually ended. He hadn't been there in a while. It had only been a matter of time before it revisited him, reminding him it would always be inside him. Like a disease.

With a grumble, he chucked the sheets off his body and lay stark still, waiting for the sweat to dry so he wouldn't be dripping his grime on everything he touched. He was freezing, though he knew it wasn't the air temperature. He cringed and sighed as he felt the mattress beneath him stick to his skin, a dampened pool silhouetting his form. When he moved, it _squelched._

Danse shivered and crunched his fists to blot out that memory. In vain. He felt his heartbeat retaliate at that mere reminder, the harbinger link to the entire memory.

 _No._ He just got out of it. He wasn't going back into it. Get up. Do something. Distract yourself. Fight it, soldier.

He spurned the urge to wait for his sweat to evaporate and rolled off the bed, standing idle for a moment to endure the hammering against his skull. As he had dreaded, sweat fled down the rolling planes of his muscled body, drip dropping on the steel deck. He rolled his eyes and swallowed the embarrassing inconvenience.

So weak. So liable. So powerless. He was a disgrace. He couldn't even control his own sweat glands.

Noticing that even his briefs were saturated, Danse growled and stomped off for the showers. Just once he would like to awaken without being a drowned rat.

* * *

The morning was its usual rudimentary pattern. Nightmare. Shower. Coffee. Cardio exercise. Another shower. Breakfast. Another coffee. Reporting. Assignments. Delegation.

But today, his trainees earned themselves a break after an endurance hike from yesterday. But that wasn't the only thing marking the day as atypical.

When Danse eventually wandered for his power armour to commit his off-duty time to maintenance, his eyes snagged on a note stuck to his chestplate. Right where that handprint had once been and then mysterious wiped away.

 _Mount up. Follow the crumb trail..._

Danse cocked a brow. Harper? What was she up to now? He scanned around the maintenance bay, looking for any 'crumb trails.' Did she really think he had time for this nonsense?

With a sigh, and against his better judgment, Danse snatched up the note to hide it from view, peered around to check no one had seen, then rounded his stationary armour to unhinge it from its station and crack its seals. Upon climbing up and sealing himself into its familiar embrace, his eyes zeroed in on something small and red on the tool rack just in front of him.

His brows soared when he stomped to it and saw what it was. An apple, specifically a caramelised, sugar coated, Dandy Boy apple. He poked at it with his metal finger, twisting it around where another note was stuck on the back.

 _Sharp as ever... -_

Danse, still with a puzzled cocked brow, followed the arrow. Another apple was perched on a steel panel lining the wall out from the bay. This was ridiculous. Nonetheless, he stomped to that one, too. A treasure trail of his favourite treats? What did she think he was, some gullible, easily entertained pet dog?

 _Ooh, there's another one._

The treasure trail eventually led him down to the lower deck and into the recreation area. Customarily, only the grunts and hot-shots slunk down here to spend their free time, a den of intoxicants allocated by the officers for the mercy of letting off steam well out of the way of others. Danse had never dreamed of spending steam down here where his inebriated, unguarded self could be witnessed and judged by acquaintance colleagues and subordinates.

He rarely indulged, but when he did, it was responsibly, and only in the company of those he trusted with his reputation. So if she was planning on luring him into some sort of social gathering, then she could think again.

But after thoroughly sweeping the area to utmost standards, Danse discovered that no ambush had been set for him, and no lurkers were awaiting him. He didn't quite know what to make of it.

Then he saw it. An apple just sitting atop the rec terminal.

 _Read me._

For goodness sake. Still, Danse obeyed and powered on the terminal, reading the entries. He skimmed until he hit the entry by Delecroix.

 **McLaren got his suit wiped out trying to drop from the top of Trinity Tower, so the current record holder is still Petris with his Prydwen-to-ground drop. Remember, no leg armor mods allowed, just a clean jump with standard T-60 and you have to be able to walk away. No exceptions.**

So _that's_ how McLaren trashed his suit. The knight had written in his incident report that a super mutant had knocked him out the window of a building. The deceptive weasel. What a waste of resources repairing his armour! He should be reported and suspended from the use of it!

Shaking his head, Danse recollected himself. The other side of the note read: _Come fly with me. Meet me out on the forecastle._ Was this what she was referring to, jumping off the Prydwen? She couldn't be serious. She expected him to join in on this immature misbehaviour and misuse of power armour? Preposterous! He thought she knew him better than that. No way in hell he was meeting her out there. She was moronic!

* * *

When Danse pushed through the hatch out to the forecastle, hit by the fresh air, Harper pivoted in her power armour from the view outbound, clad in glistening eyes and a beaming smile, her hair swishing free in the wind to lace her features. Damn, she always looked good in her armour. He hadn't seen her in it for so long, and had almost forgotten how much of a sight she was in it. How a woman could be so attractive within such a masculine machine, Danse didn't know.

"Hey, you," she welcomed him with a fond tilt of her head, teeth bright against her sun-kissed skin.

"Knight, you've had me on a wild goose-chase throughout the Prydwen, only for me to learn that you plan for us to _jump overboard_. Please tell me you're joking."

She scoffed at him in her amusement, her head still tilted. "Come on, drop the regs, Danse. You're off duty. I'm off duty. Let's have some fun."

Why did he feel like he was being seduced? He arched a brow at her after shutting the hatch behind him. "I don't think our concepts of fun coincide..."

"Come _on_." Before he could react, her metal hand took his and she gently yanked him closer, right up to the railings, where the airport spread below.

" _Harper_ ," he tried to growl, but it came out as more of a clipped whine, and he scolded himself for it. He was her superior, no, her commanding officer again, and he was letting her lead him astray with this roguish activity. He pulled on his best scowl. "We shouldn't be—"

"Shush," she chuckled. "It's not like it's forbidden, just... frowned upon." So when he frowned upon her, she justified herself with a bitten smile. "You hard-dropped down into the quarry from a vertibird, how is this any different?"

"That was hardly equal to the height of the Prydwen, and it had been for a legitimate reason—to save your life."

Her mischief was replaced with soft sentiment for a moment, and Danse found himself held up with her in reminiscence, their eyes alone communicating their shared hardship and bond. Harper moved on from it quickly, stopping it from going deeper, or just dead-set on her current mission objective.

"Come on. Do this with me. I promise you'll feel amazing afterward. Free."

The thing within him that only she awakened _was_ sending a thrill through his blood at the thought of making a hard-drop from this altitude... Danse took another survey of their potential landing zone. Right behind the airport ruins would be most ideal, along the shoreline. He considered the wind strength, the inevitable blast radius, possible structural damage to the nearby building. Hmm. He peeked up at her as she hung off his decision, her eyes teeming with excitement, staring, waiting. Then he grinned.

"Yes!" she said in victory, smile once again on full display. Her metal hand spanked his armour's rump and he grunted in surprise as the strength of it jolted him slightly. Well now that was awfully frisky. "Right, helmets on. Paladin—check, suspension—check, balls of steel—check." She winked at him before slipping on and clicking her helmet into place. He still had that peculiar feeling of being seduced, somehow...

Danse followed suit with his helmet, then moved along beside Harper as she picked a launching spot. "Maxson will have us scrubbing the outside of the Prydwen's hull if he finds out about this, you know."

"Fuck Maxson."

Younger than both of them, yet the elder got stuck playing the angry big daddy in this alliance effort while the two kiddies were off being trouble. A sudden turn around, since Danse had been playing the big daddy over the past week mediating the two. He wondered what was happening to his world.

Harper was happening to his world.

"You ready? In tandem," she decided, voice tinned beneath her helmet.

"Wait... you see that?" At his sudden wonder at the sky to her back, Harper fell for his bait and rotated her attention. Danse could hardly believe his luck and took his chance, and with one step, was upon the railing. "Ad victoriam, sister!" he flung at her before dropping away.

"Wh—hey!"

He didn't have the wind to laugh, because his stomach was still up there with her. The sudden gust of rapid descent had his armoured limbs set in their freefall, and he locked it down to keep his centre of gravity stable. The freedom of empty air yawned out beneath him, and he had time to gaze out across his vantage point at the spread of the city ruins, the withered spires reaching high for the apex of the sun. One would think that with the grounds rushing up at him with the potential for injury, his mind would be in a state of panic, but it was oddly peaceful, even as the air harassed his external audio feedback.

That elusive calm within the chaos...

Then the earth was suddenly upon him. His weight punched down in a sensory overload for a split second, his breath pushed from his lungs, then he was crisp, his armour's legs bearing the impact in outstanding technological design. A small crater encircled him as Danse stretched up from his landing posture.

Boom! Harper landed just behind him, too close. The force of her impact staggered his balance and damn near had him keeling forward to sprawl into the sand. He recovered and was set to whip around and give her an earful, when her spirited laughter halted him.

With a click and a tug, her helmet was off and she was purely infectious, flushed with exhilaration, hair a wild mess, sapphires vivid, teeth shining like polished ivory. "You bastard," she sniped half-heartedly, lumbering nearer. Danse couldn't help but chuckle in return, reaching up to remove his own helmet and taste the salty sea air.

"Feel amazing?" she asked, still a ray of light.

He inhaled deeply, feeling the fresh air expand his lungs with a luscious, refreshing chill. "Actually, I do," he exclaimed in pleasant surprise. Like she had promised, he felt _free_. And... his headache was absent. His blood could pump and flow fluidly to invigorate his every cell without provoking the sensitive vessels clutching his brain. He focused back on this wild and wonderful woman before him. She was looking at him with such admiration, drinking in his details with a swell of wonder in her eyes, that he suddenly wondered at her motive for all this.

"I think I really needed this, thank you, Harper. But, I have to wonder where this came from?" The question pulled a slight chuckle from him.

She lapsed out of her trance from watching him—he still had no idea what she found so fascinating about him to stare like that so often—and slipped back into her roguery. "We've both been slaving away with this alliance, I think we both deserve some downtime. And the only way to get you to loosen up was to throw you off the Prydwen... well maybe not the _only_ way. But one thing at a time."

Suspicious. "I don't think I like where this is going..."

She laughed, another of those naughty ones. "Relax. Drinks tonight. You in?"

"Ah," he uttered knowingly, thinking back to the musty den under the decks. "Look, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I prefer not to mingle down in the lower decks, even off-duty. Things are sensitive right now with the Minutemen trainees among us, and I don't want to set a bad example at my rank."

The shake of Harper's head was placating. "No tag-ons. Just you and me. A private celebration." Oh, Danse thought. Hmm. Just the two of them? Alone? With intoxicants? Was that really wise? When he hovered in consideration, she added, "You still owe me that story on you and Maxson, you know."

So that's where she was going with this. He wondered when she would corner him with this. He supposed it was due time to let this cat out of the bag and get it over with. She _had_ been waiting patiently, and was probably dying to get some dirt on both he and Maxson to throw at them next time they teamed up against her in negotiations. "Alright," he yielded. "But just a few, we're both on duty tomorrow, and I hear Proctor Ingram and Doctor Li are nearing completion on their project and will be ready for the next step. The last thing Elder Maxson needs is us reporting for our mission while green and hungover."

She tittered at the thought, but complied. "I promise not to get you wasted. Meet me in the rec at 1900. Don't leave me hanging."

As they parted ways along the shoreline to keep their questionable activity off-grid, Danse couldn't keep his smile from unfurling. Life was good. He had the Brotherhood, his work and purpose in life, a promising future, and he had Harper. Ilya.

Indeed, life was good.

* * *

 **A/N:** Bonus chapter more than anything. Double-chapter week since I finished this one ahead of schedule and figured why not just post it fresh. Next chapter will probably be another big one, and will finally kick-off Blind Betrayal.

-Terminal entry is in-game. I've been waiting to write this ever since I stumbled across it. Just some fun before we embark down the dark tunnel again!

-Thanks to everyone for the continued support and comments, I really don't think I would have gotten this far without you guys! ^_^

 **-JaneDoe -** Thank you so much! I always have a little happy-dance when I read grateful reviews :D


	40. Something's Gotta Give

_Warning: Sexy-time_

* * *

 **Something's Gotta Give**

* * *

Dinner hour couldn't pass fast enough. It was like time had deliberately slowed just to piss on her patience. Ilya lurked in the mess hall after her meal, reining in her craving for her night coffee, both because it was a bad habit, and because she wouldn't need the caffeine hit to accompany the alcohol.

She felt like a rebellious adolescent again, feverish before a night of hardcore partying, knowing her crush would be there to play the game of catch and kiss. Except she was thirty, there would be no hardcore partying, and Danse definitely would not be chasing her for a kiss.

Tonight was for him, not for her, she reminded herself with a stern monologue. She had no intention of letting this escalate and put his integrity at risk once more.

 _So keep your panties on and your cleavage zipped up, Ilya. You already went too far when you spanked the poor man._

When 1900 was rolling nearer, Ilya slipped off from the mess with a casual tread, though every fibre of her wanted to break out into a frenzied sprint for the lower deck.

Danse was already waiting. Shit on it. Of course he was ahead of schedule—he was Danse. He was leaning nonchalantly against a supply crate, handsome features carved by the dim lighting, the dusting of fur on his face well-defined, arms folded loosely, garbed in his usual olive jumpsuit uniform, that bomber jacket on and looking damn fine. Ilya slowed her incoming pace just to drink in the sight of him and constrain her feminine reaction that bloomed without warning.

When she picked up the pace on approach, his attention snapped to her and he stood out of genteel habit, the smile that came next full of intimate warmth. His brown eyes seemed so large and liquid all of a sudden as she came nearer. Large and liquid just for her.

 _Put them away, Danse. Please. Put them away before I kiss you._

He pulled himself free from her eyes and produced something from atop the crate behind him. A bottle of whiskey. "I wasn't sure if we were bringing our own or using the supply down here from Teagan, so I thought it was safe to bring this just in case."

Danse and whiskey combined made heaven for a woman like her, and she bit her lip before favouring him with one keen eye. "If I remember right, you warned me _not_ to get you wasted. So you brought hard liquor, and I bring beers."

His laughter was deep and subdued upon his realisation. "You have a point. Perhaps I got a little overexcited. Should I go back and exchange it for a pack of beers instead?" He playfully moved the bottle back behind him to animate the prospect.

"No! No, whiskey's good." Ilya lunged for it before he could hide it out of her reach, her body skimming over his in the action, and she caught a fume of his natural scent before receding. A warm, potent musk weaved with leather, machine grease, and gun powder. _Shit._

Danse was oblivious to his effect on her, roaming over to the nearest chair beside the small table. His fingers scooted over two shot glasses and his brows pointedly flicked to the bottle in her hold. Ilya only smiled and stepped to hand it off again to him, watching in anticipation as he poured them each a generous shot. Steady hands, she observed.

She sat opposite him as he handed her a shot, their eyes connected, and then they grinned and clinked their glasses together.

"I would say ad victoriam," Danse uttered, "but it would seem a little conceited, I think..."

"I _am_ Brotherhood again, remember."

"I know, I just... didn't want to come across as..." he shrugged, "macho, I guess."

Ilya snorted in hilarity. "You? Macho? Never."

"Alright," he said defensively, though a smile tugged at his lips. "You've made your point. You think of a toast, then."

She mused for a moment, squinting into the rich golden liquid captured between her fingers, craving its hit of fire down her throat. Her eyes danced back to the man whose hit of fire she craved more. "To us. To a lasting friendship."

Danse's surprised smile was like an embrace, adoration warming his eyes. He gestured with the shot glass. "To a lasting friendship."

There was a flutter of longing between them, an air of forbidden sorrow, before they downed their shots and heartily slammed the glasses to the table.

Ilya hissed in pleasure at the burn. Danse didn't even flinch. She remembered his finesse with a gulp of vodka down in the quarry, and her resolve to one day test his drinking game. Being the competitive creature she was, she secretly challenged him tonight.

"Another round?" she proposed, reaching for the bottle. "Just to kick things off strong?"

There was a flash of hesitation in his eyes, then he turned it into caution. "I suppose. Just easy with it, remember?"

"Aha."

The second smackdown was harsher as it scorched already raw paths. Ilya grimaced and smiled wildly. Danse hissed. _There it is._ _Sexy_ _as hell._

The heat of the whiskey curled into her stomach, and she was satiated for now. Her beers made their appearance to keep them held over, one slid across the table to him. He caught the neck, but didn't pop the lid like she did. She took a sample sip while eyeing him. "So. The time has come. You and Maxson. I want all the dirt."

His chest hinted at the makings of mirth as he leaned back in his chair. She loved the way his chest rumbled in humour, and wished to hear him release his full cargo of life, unbound from his guarded reserve.

"Well, it all began when I was on reclamation patrol with my squad..."

 _The Capital Wasteland had rolled out before them in a dreary landscape of dead soil and wilted trees, the sky a sallow rinse over it all. Such was the prophecy for mankind, Danse remembered thinking._

 _It was day three of their slog for their city-bound destination, scavenging the ruins for pre-war tech, a site reported by a Wastelander that Protector Casdin had hired as scout._

"So you guys changed up your ranks and everything?" Ilya interrupted, more curious than ever about the Outcasts ever since discovering that Danse had a history with them.

He nodded, not seeming to mind her interruption. In fact, he looked pleased with her eager interest. "Casdin declared it a way of expressing our independence—cutting all ties and traces of Lyons' Brotherhood. I was the rank of Defender."

 _Defender Danse. Has a ring to it,_ Ilya thought.

 _As they had neared the city outskirts, claps of gunplay and sporadic explosions carried to their ears. This was usual when approaching the city ruins, but there was something to the quality of the exchange; conjoined quick controlled bursts after a grenade offload, versus continuous, disorderly fire. The Outcasts had known they were the sounds of trained soldiers up against some force of wild scum. They had hustled toward the sounds, looking to locate the extent of the battlefield in order to skirt it._

 _Brotherhood and Super Mutants. The skirmish was vicious, laser and plasma traded with lead in a mesh of mayhem, lines broken by charging mutants and soldiers lacking precious cover. A downed vertibird lay nearby, one of the engines spewing smoke, a trail of debris in its wake to illustrate a skidded demise. It was clear that the Super Mutants had the upper hand the moment they shot the vertibird down. The soldiers were getting slaughtered._

 _"_ _What a waste," Danse's squad leader said with a bitter tongue. "But they're getting what they deserve. The sooner Lyons' people are whittled down, the sooner we can be free to search the wastes without having to worry about crossing paths with them. What do you say we give those muties a hand, gentlemen? Play both sides and clear ourselves a path."_

 _Danse had been appalled by the suggestion, but by the looks of the squad, no one was opposed to this idea. Yes, relations with Lyons' people had been hostile for many years now, but there was no need to go out of their way to cut each other down. It was dishonourable. He had to do something._

 _"_ _Sir, with all due respect, I for one am opposed to this." He recalled how everyone had snapped to stare at him. It had seemed as though they were all eager to burn down the Brotherhood. "I think we should avoid contact and only engage in self-defence. There's no need to risk our lives or spill more blood where enough has already been spilled. I suggest we just skirt around... sir."_

 _His squad leader hadn't taken that lightly, hounding Danse back into his place and issuing a formal warning. Danse had been thankful for his helmet, for he had felt his cheeks burn hot in the degradation. His squad leader had then irately reminded him that he was no longer a paladin and that these were not his men to order around, that he had to earn his place in their ranks for that right once more._

 _During all that, the skirmish between the Brotherhood and mutants had taken a turn for the worse. Men and women were thrown like ragdolls, torn apart limb from limb, mutants tearing metal and flesh in frenzied rages. Danse remembered the feeling of helplessness in his gut as his squad decided an attack would be wasteful and began to fall out._

 _He hadn't fallen in with them. He remembered standing, rooted, watching them lumber away in their black and red armour, his brothers and sisters. But he had turned back to the slackening battle beyond the rubble. They were also his brothers and sisters._

 _One soldier was still alive, he had seen, heart drubbing up again in hope. He was hunkered in his steel, behind the carcass of the vertibird, trading off tenacious fire with the advancing Super Mutants. Soldiers had fallen in a crescent around his last stand, as if in a sacrificial guard. Danse had thought maybe he was just a young initiate that his superiors had died to protect._

 _As Danse tussled with his verdict, whether or not to just leave the sole survivor to his fate, or to aid an enemy, he watched in astonishment as the soldier burst up from his cover to meet the mutants in their flanking advance, obviously knowing his fate was doomed. His firing arm was clearly injured, the plating shredded and buckled, blood giving it a rusted look. He had chosen to go down in defiance. The honour of death in battle that the most valiant of brothers dreamed of._

 _That alone had stirred Danse into action. He stormed out from the rubble and flanked the mutants in an opening salvo of laser fire, singeing their calloused flesh into soot. Half turned to retaliate, while the other half stayed their focus on the sole survivor._

 _Danse had made fast headway through their storm of bullets, tugging his trigger to suppress as he moved, vaporising and bashing into their lines like an enraged bull, but he had been too slow._

 _The sole survivor had been met in step by a brute of a mutant, his laser fire flaring harmlessly at the creature's gnarled metal armour as he towered upon him. Danse had watched in fragments, between pouring out fire and smacking his weight at mutants, as the soldier unleashed a glorious battlecry upon impending defeat, gripping his rifle to swing the stock out for a blow, even with his lacerated arm. The brute swiped the rifle from his grip and then grabbed him by the torso plating, hauling him up above his head like a triumphant wrestler. He was hurled across the courtyard, slamming full-brunt into a building's concrete pillar. There was a loud crack and a ragged cry of pain._

 _Danse ploughed through the mutants to reach the brute, who was stalking in for the sole survivor, reaching back for his shotgun to bear down on him and finish him off. Danse burnt off his fusion cells to rip into the thing's exposed flesh on its back. It turned on him with a demonic howl, redirecting its barrel. But Danse had foreseen it, honing his fire in on the arm to scorch it to the bone._

 _Another howl, and Danse was driven by it, pushing forward into a sprint and tackle. His collision with the brute was of metal on metal, a crash and shriek as they toppled over. The mutant fought for Danse's throat, presumably to rip his head off, while Danse fought to pull free, shuffling his laser rifle up to then land a solid smack upside the chin. It knocked the mutant down enough for Danse to then straighten up, prop a metal boot up on its chest, raise, aim, and smash down through its ugly skull._

 _That moment had been greatly satisfying, Danse reminisced._

"You have a sharp memory with all that detail in combat," Ilya mentioned, her hand under her chin as she watched and listened to Danse's tale, working slowly at her beer. He was completely swept away in it all, and quite vibrant with his choice of descriptions and impassioned retelling. That was Danse, though, she realised. Passionate with his words.

"It pays to be sharp in battle," Danse resolved, pulled from his memory. "Years of experience hone the mind to better process and function in a high pressure situation." He gave her an inquisitive look. "You can't recall all of your battles?"

Ilya shrugged dismissively, trying to hide her sudden embarrassment. Combat tended to mesh together and tangle in her memory, like rolling around in a scrap with someone on the ground. She just fell back on her impulses and natural reflexes, no time to fully think. "I guess you're just more 'honed' than I am."

His look turned more gentle, perhaps realising he'd unintentionally come across as arrogant and in turn made her feel inadequate. "I'm sorry. I sound like a condescending braggart. We all process things in our own way and respond uniquely to situations. For instance, I will never understand nor dream of matching your adept skill to aim true while keeping so agile in combat. Or how swiftly you move through the battlefield from one obstacle to the next while I'm still designing my advance. And how you can channel your emotions into your skill, instead of letting them get the better of you."

Ilya was smirking at him. "It's okay, Danse. I forgive you. You can stop kissing my ass now."

A sheepish air stole over him at that, but then he just chuckled, reaching for his beer. Finally. He was giving the impression of being so relaxed, joints and muscles at ease, smiles rolling onto his face smoothly. It was so good to see him like this. "It _is_ true, though," he added in. "You fight with finesse, yet with such ferocity... You can be... very captivating to watch in combat."

Ilya stalled from taking another sip, his words catching her with their evocative tone, but the frown on his face—almost in lost musing, as if something had just dawned on him—gave her even more pause. The booze couldn't have gone to his head this fast. Maybe the relaxed mood down here had loosened his tongue and dropped his self-restraint. Maybe he was still just kissing her ass out of guilt. Even so, she felt herself swaying free of her own guard, and promptly pulled it back up. "I'm not the only one with an edge in battle," she said with forced merriment to erase any chances of flirtatiousness they were about to fall into. For once, that had been his fault and not hers. "Let's get back to your story?"

Danse seemed to suddenly remember himself, frowning deeper and shifting in his seat. He blinked as though to clear a hazy vision. "Yes. Where was I?"

 _The sole survivor was still conscious, Danse could hear the scraping of metal as he tried to drag himself from the rubble, the prolonged grunts of pain and anger. Danse had made his way to him and knelt to assess his state._

 _"_ _Don't move, soldier. You'll only make matters worse for yourself. Where are you hurt?"_

 _The sole survivor had growled an indication at his arm. "Just the arm. Smashed and tore off the plating in the crash." He growled another indication at the downed vertibird. "Think it broke in the collision with the pillar. Feels like a bone protruding."_

 _Danse had placed a supportive hand to the sole survivor's good shoulder, and carefully craned down to survey the damage more closely, metal finger lifting at broken armour plating. The soldier had swallowed a moan. Indeed, there had been a bone protruding out just below the elbow. Two actually. Both his radius and ulna had snapped. The arm was warped on an abnormal angle._

"Ooh. Ouch," Ilya bared her teeth at the thought. "Bet that was a sucker to set back in place." Danse only gave a grim nod.

 _"_ _I'm afraid it's as bad as it seems," Danse had told the soldier. He had aided him to sit up. "I have Med-X to dull the pain."_

 _But when he had reached for the soldier's helmet to help him remove it, the man had flinched back and shook his head. "No. I need a clear head. I can handle the pain."_

 _"_ _Now's not the time to play tough, soldier. With that arm, the pain will only cloud your judgement and make you a liability. I'm offering you the means to operate free of the pain, not to mention saving me the hassle of having to be extra gentle with you, so take it."_

 _With a grumbled sigh, the sole survivor had nodded and allowed Danse to remove his helmet. The man beneath had been young, perhaps early-twenties, though marred by the trials of war. The first thing that had caught Danse's eye was the deep and jagged scar running down his right cheek, curving from the tear trough and down around the apple. The stitch marks were embedded to speak of just how deep the wound had been. There was another, much more subtle scar slashing down through his left brow... much like Danse's own on his right brow. His hair, shaved to regulations, though a little denser at the apex. A tolerable dusting of facial hair. Weathered skin with shallow lines of expression. A hard, gritty frown to display the source of those lines. And although his scar had caught Danse first, his eyes caught him for longer. Pale blue, sharp and intelligent, heavily shadowed in their weary sockets, but they whispered of having seen what nobody else had seen, endured endless horrors and witnessed the worst of the world._

 _His were the eyes of a tormented soul._

 _"_ _I'm Pala—Defender Danse. What's your name, soldier?"_

 _The sole survivor had stared in what Danse now knew as a kind of subdued shock, that he was not recognised. Back then Danse had thought he was only wary because he was an Outcast. "Arthur," was all he gave._

 _"_ _Well, Initiate Arthur, let's get you back to your people. For what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss here today. But your survival made their sacrifice worth something."_

Ilya was snickering at Danse's expense, the humiliation on his face so stark. "You didn't click at all?" she asked with humoured incredulity.

He shrugged helplessly, voice slightly raised in pitch for self-defence. "I hadn't seen him for over five years, and he had changed significantly from his younger self. As I said, I had estimated his age to be around early-twenty. He was really just sixteen."

"The Brotherhood must have worked him hard... or he worked himself hard..." Ilya couldn't quite comprehend what his childhood must have entailed. The alcohol was ridding her of her crisp sense of reality. " _Initiate Arthur_... I bet that hurt his ego."

Danse thoughtfully twirled his beer by its neck. "Considering he only gave me his first name, it was clear he didn't want his identity revealed to me. Perhaps he thought I would take advantage and apprehend him to use as leverage against Lyons' Brotherhood, or that I might just shoot him down on the spot. But looking back, I think the real reason was because he simply wanted to be viewed as just another soldier. Not an example to be idolised on a pedestal. His armour bore no insignia to display his rank."

"What rank was he at that point?"

"Sentinel. It's the highest rank one can achieve short of elder. They usually operate outside of the chain of command and are entrusted with their own free will in serving the Brotherhood's cause and maintaining their honour. The last sentinel before Maxson would have been Sarah Lyons, who was killed in action years before, shortly after assuming the mantle of Elder, after Owen Lyons', her father, passed..." Ilya sensed there was more there, but Danse moved on before she could scavenge for more. "Sentinels typically operate with their own elite squad. The soldiers that were killed that day were Maxson's. I was unaware, he maintained himself so well, but he must have been despairing a great deal... he may have even wanted to die with them on that day."

Ilya trailed her eyes over Danse's fallen features then. Had he wanted to die too when his recon team had been killed off, one by one? Was this where Maxson's protectiveness over him rooted from? Their shared experience of loss and blame? Had this bonded them as brothers?

She wanted to reach across the table to grasp his hand. She could. His hand was resting right there while he stared off into space. The chance was right there. Should she?

"Anyway," Danse suddenly revived, reaching again for his beer. "The story doesn't end there. We haven't even gotten to the good part, yet."

 _Arthur had swallowed the Med-X waterless and bared his teeth to stand upright with a hand from Danse. "You're Outcast. Why help me?" he had asked flatly, suspiciously._

 _Danse had considered and formulated his words carefully, but they had come to him quickly, and from the heart. "We're all Brotherhood deep down, Initiate. Perhaps not brothers of the same steel, but steel, nevertheless."_

 _He would never forget the way Arthur had looked at him. The whispers of horror and despair in his eyes had sifted away into the manifestation of something Danse had not known at the time. Epiphany._

 _They had spent some time securing Arthur's broken arm to his chest with duct tape, looting for ammo, gathering the bodies of the fallen, and retrieving their holotags and any letters to relatives. When Danse suggested they start out, Arthur had revealed that he was a lancer, and that his vertibird was still operational, though the right engine turbine was compromised. He went on to tell him they had been on a rescue mission when the engine took a direct hit in the mutant ambush. The controls had shorted out and they had dropped and veered, right across the building's flank._

 _Arthur disclosed the location of the rescue mission beacon. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was the exact destination for Danse's current retrieval mission. The look they had shared seared a visual imprint on Danse's brain even to this day._

 _So it would be that Danse would have to fly the vertibird if they were going to reach that location in time to stop a bloodbath. With his broken arm, Arthur was unable to pilot, and would have to verbally guide Danse in his epic, and foolhardy, undertaking. It was an undertaking to remember, that was for sure._

 _"_ _So, Initiate-Lancer, then," Danse remembered correcting himself with an air of authority over the young man. He had been starting the engines up by Arthur's guidance, and had been spouting his much-missed authority to cover his own nervousness at lifting the wounded bird into the air. "Being so young and inexperienced, you shouldn't blame yourself for what happened here, soldier. A mere initiate should never have been designated to pilot through such a hostile region of the city. It's no wonder you were caught off-guard and shot down. Experienced pilots would know the areas that were most likely to have ambushes set up. But don't worry. I know these ruins like the back of my hand. I'll get us there in no time, and in one piece."_

 _Arthur had said nothing, opting to keep his thoughts buried behind a flaccid face. Danse now knew that his words must have really cut deep at the time. Once the engines sputtered back to life, Arthur promptly directed Danse in how to gain lift and assume a steady altitude. Soon, they were airborne, if barely, the aircraft teetering in its alignment._

 _Danse had thought it was surprisingly simple, even coming out with, '"Well, that was simple enough," until Arthur told him to press the stick forward to dive the nose and have them moving. Because they were one engine short, the vertibird was struggling to maintain lift, and when Danse steepened the nose, hard, unaware that he needed a deft hand, they had suddenly plummeted._

 _Both men had unleashed sounds akin to screams as a building rushed up into view through the canopy. Arthur had yelled to "pull up the stick, you imbecile!'" Danse had been too flustered for that to really sink in and did what he was told, saving them from a collision just in time._

 _Danse would always remember Arthur's deliberate words to him after that. "Now, let's focus on getting there in one piece, shall we?"_

 _That time, it had been Danse's turn to say nothing._

 _So they had chugged across the skies bound for peace-making. At Danse's fascinated curiosity, Arthur had answered and explained all he needed to know about the basics of flying, and then some bonus tips. Danse memorized what each button and dial did, what to use when and where, the intricacies of making sharp twists midair to dodge missiles, how to recover from sudden stalls, how to glide through an unpredicted shift in air currents, and most importantly, how to land without killing the both of them. He was going to have a practical on that very soon._

"So baby-Maxi taught you how to fly. Cute," Ilya ribbed fondly.

Danse coped with her emasculating ridicule by taking a sip at his beer and just eyeing her, waiting for her amused smile to finally fade away. "You know, you're not making this any easier for me. I _am_ aware that this story shows me in a very negative and humiliating light..."

"Well Maxson doesn't seem to have held a grudge. He even told me that you were his best officer."

The man's eyebrows gave a subtle flicker in surprise. But his following question wasn't what Ilya had been expecting. "You two were talking about me?"

She scuffled for words, snatching up her beer on reflex and leaning back in her chair with feigned nonchalance. "Yeah, I mean, the three of us are in this little trio thing to keep this alliance on its feet. We were talking about how good you are at giving us strategic advice." _I'm talking out of my ass and he knows it._

"Aha," was all Danse responded with, taking another long draught of his beer. Ilya watched his Adam's apple undulate as he swallowed, and suddenly felt the urge to kiss it and trail her lips down his thick, stubble-flecked throat... _Grrr..._ Her pulse fluttered and heat pooled, so she followed his example and gulped at her beer.

They were busy just guzzling beer when light footsteps reverberated down the decking. They pulled their bottles away from their mouths to turn and clash eyes with a young soldier, probably on patrol. He had frozen in his step and was gawking at them with wide eyes, as if he had stumbled upon something alarmingly erotic between the two.

"Oh, uh, sorry, didn't mean to interrupt anything, sirs. Um, ma'am. Uh, sir and ma'am. Sorry! I'll just..." he didn't even bother to finish his sentence, gesturing to the direction he was to head, then hightailing the heck out of there.

Both Ilya and Danse stared after his awkward departure, then broke into soft snickers.

"Perhaps we should take this into my quarters to avoid further interruptions," Danse suggested, and with complete innocence, it seemed. Ilya was trying to keep her shock buried, but he must have read it in her features. "Unless you think it would be inappropriate. It was just a suggestion."

"No, not at all," she heard herself say from a far away land, where common sense didn't exist. "We're just friends sharing a beer and a story."

She followed Danse up the decks in a warm daze of alcohol and anticipation, the people just fusing together into a muted sea, flowing by and ebbing away. She had stowed the pack of beers under an arm, and he had collected up the whiskey and shot glasses, and Ilya realised the pair of them sneaking off from under the decks probably looked suspicious as hell.

She gently tugged at Danse's bomber from behind. "Hey, um, maybe we should go in your quarters separately? Look at us. We look like a pair of boozers stashing our goods. You know how fast scuttlebutt spreads around here."

He was apparently amused by her anxiety, lifting a brow in his way. "Wasn't it you that said we were just friends sharing a beer and a story?"

"Just playing it safe," she defended light-heartedly.

Danse studied her, then lifted the same studying eye across their surrounds, then shrugged. "Alright. If you think it's that much of an issue. Wait a few minutes in the mess and then come in after me."

Ilya nodded, and they went their separate ways, like forbidden lovers keeping their dirty little secret under wraps. Bullshit, really. They were all adults, but unfortunately, that's just how it worked in the military if you wanted to get close to someone, romantically or not. Better to keep it off the grid than have it become common knowledge and find yourself kept under red-alert-watch by your superiors and rival colleagues.

She broke direction for the mess, but not before throwing a look after Danse, maybe to catch a look at his ass, yet what she caught sight of instead had her suppressing a curse.

Maxson had been wandering out from his quarters, just as Danse had been wandering into his. The two men were right in each other's paths, and were forced to interact. Ilya slithered up against the nearest wall of steel and spied on their exchange, partly out of cringe-reflex for Danse, since he had just been caught with alcohol while rostered for duty tomorrow, and partly out of amusement, since the whole situation was funny as all hell. He wasn't really in any real danger, there were no regs against drinking in off-duty hours, even the night before duty, as long as it was responsibly.

Maxson, as expected, eagle-eyed the whiskey and two shot glasses in Danse's possession, then needled the paladin a dubious look. "Danse. Good to see you've spared the time to unwind. Though I hope that whiskey's not all for you." The satire was clear, but Ilya thought she detected an ulterior motive or warning under his tone.

Danse must have detected it, also. "Not at all, sir. As tempting as it is to polish it off with company, if that were the case, I'd be nothing but dead weight tomorrow."

 _Nicely done, Danse._ Ilya watched how a humoured smile teased at Maxson's lip, and then his eyes filled with sudden interest.

"The whiskey is only ever as good as the company, yes?" _He's fishing to find out who Danse is drinking with..._

But Danse wasn't lured by the bait. "Indeed, sir."

Maxson, feeling jealous or excluded or lonely, feigned a polite smile in his defeat, and then let Danse be on his way, the two men striding past each other with an undercurrent of awkwardness. Ilya wondered what it must be like to be a man and share a bond with another man, yet feel so bound by their masculinity that they were restrained from expressing their feelings toward one another.

 _Men._

She waited for Maxson to disappear up deck, then slipped out from her hiding spot. Danse was still outside his quarters for some reason, standing aimlessly with bottle and glasses still in hand. Waiting for her. She sent him a questioning smile on her approach.

"I'm having second thoughts, Harper. Perhaps this isn't such a good idea. I'm taking the trainee's through some firearms training tomorrow, and I'll need a sharp eye to pick out those who excel. There's also the possibility than Ingram and Doctor Li could finish their work tomorrow and we could be given our assignment."

 _God damn it. I finally get him to chill out for an evening, and then Maxson comes along and spooks him. Good job, Maxson._

"Seriously, you could do that with your eyes closed, and it takes more than one session to pick out the sharpshots. And what are the chances that we'll get our assignment tomorrow?" She cast aside all her delicacy—or more, the alcohol did—and grabbed him by his free hand, dragging him out of his indecision and toward the hatch to his quarters. "Now come on, you," a chuckle bubbled up from her throat at the startled look on his face, "I want to hear the rest of your story."

He made no effort to refuse her, letting her pull him into his private quarters where she could have her way with him. His hand was sturdy and warm right down to his fingers as her own slipped through his upon releasing him. He sealed the door shut behind him, and he was smiling helplessly. Good.

Suddenly realising what she had done and where she was, Ilya hovered idly in the centre of Danse's quarters, timidly sliding her eyes over his personal space and possessions, like she were invading upon some sacred domain. She cradled her elbows and tried to assume a posture of deference.

It wasn't as orderly as she had expected. In fact, it was almost homely. Cardboard boxes occupied a corner, brimmed with files. Basic furniture, like lockers, a cabinet, benches, and a desk, lined the walls in simplistic placements. Toolboxes, weapons crates, and a tattered Brotherhood flag gave it all its manly imprint. But what made it homely were the scattered tools atop the bench, escapees from the toolbox, visible weapons, maybe for display or a sense of visual security, and the cat bowls topped up with hunks of various meats.

She angled back at him curiously. He was watching her just as curiously, awaiting her verdict with a hue of self-consciousness.

"You like cats?"

Danse almost laughed, but caught himself. "Of all the things you could have said, you choose that?"

Ilya wasn't so guarded with her laughter. "I'm a dog person. Dog people and cat people don't mesh well. I see a red flag and it's a deal breaker, we just can't be friends. So are you? A cat person?"

His manner rolled from amusement to introspection. "I've never really thought about whether I was a dog or cat person. From watching how you and Dogmeat interact, it seems dogs are very loyal and sociable companions. Cats tend to prefer their own company and are slower to trust. I guess my preference would depend upon what mindset I was in at the time."

His contemplative response was so typically mood-killing that Ilya could only stand and smile at him. He had loosened up so much since knowing her, that sometimes she forgot how stiff he could be, even outside of duty. She loved his rare playful side and how it could still catch her off-guard, but she would always love his pragmatic core and how he could make her see things in a whole new light. The kind of man she could hold a deep and meaningful discussion with for hours. People like that were rare.

And he was just so Danse.

Funny, how some simple small-talk on dogs and cats could take them here.

"So you're still up to be won over to the dog or cat side. Challenge accepted," Ilya grinned. "Another beer?"

But Danse strode over to the nearest bench, depositing the whiskey and shot glasses. "I think it's due time for another round."

" _Mhmm_ , someone's being a bad boy tonight," Ilya taunted before she could stop herself. _And now I'm staring at his ass again. Get a grip on yourself. Can't you hold your liquor anymore?_

Her flirt evoked a nervous chuckle from Danse while he poured the shots. The stream of alcohol from bottle to glass was a little unsteady. When he handed off her glass, there was a small pucker in his forehead. "I don't have any chairs..."

Ilya eliminated his bed as an option. That would just be pushing it. Instead, her eyes centred on the bench behind him. "All good. We can sit up here." He shrugged and made a small hum of agreement, and the two were soon propped up on the workbench leaning back against the wall, secretly hoping it wouldn't give out under their weight. Ilya figured it would serve a good laugh, though.

They clinked, and dropped their shots, savouring the burn and aftermath of giddy warmth. Like routine, Ilya cracked the beers, and they clinked again, giggling at the repetition. Danse picked up the story once more, speech a little less fluent and a little more slurred.

 _Their destination had been an old technology servicing complex, which had seemed very promising for Danse's Outcast team to recover some pre-war tech. Obviously Lyons' Brotherhood had come to a similar conclusion, deciding to put a halt on their daily acts of heroism to commit to their original purpose._

 _Danse and Arthur had simultaneously cited the reason for the initial rescue request. "Super Mutants." Corpses of the beasts lay haphazardly around the site, riddled with laser and plasma scoring, the earth marked by blood. But now, the battle of man against mutant had revolved back to man against himself. The Outcasts had apparently finished off the mutants, only to lay into what remained of Lyons' Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood were returning fire with the vehemence to match._

 _"_ _Why must it be this way..." Arthur had trudged in from the troop load to lean in behind the cockpit chair, his voice a bitter musing. Then it raised in a harsh rasp against the sputtering of the rotors. "The knight-commander that had called for aid reported that radioactivity was higher in the region, suggesting the source was nearby, most likely an undetonated pre-war atomic warhead. The mutants were attacking in ceaseless waves, acting almost territorial to a degree only witnessed when defending their hives. We were advised to attempt locating the warhead upon our approach so that we might disarm it or create a blockade, but that is now a redundant cause in the face of this anarchy. We must stop this."_

 _Danse had angled his head back in surprise, Arthur's war-torn face hard-set on the battlefield below, purpose on his brow. "You're very well informed for an initiate... and very resolute... I'm impressed, soldier. You're an example of what it means to be a brother of steel." Arthur had only looked down on him for a split second before pacing back into the load. Danse had only meant to express his amazement at the young man's composure after losing his squad and his ability to stay mission-centred, but now he knew he had accidentally come across as patronising. Arthur had done well to stomach it._

 _"_ _Remember what I told you about how to make a soft landing!" Arthur had yelled from the load as he slammed the door release, the wind gusting in to momentarily unsettle the vertibird's stability. "I want you to land us right in the crossfire!"_

 _Danse had almost sputtered. "Come again? Initiate Arthur, that is an absurd suggestion and will get us both killed! I may not be a pilot, but even I know that you never touch-down in the heart of the battle. Do you honestly think they would cease fire because we blocked their lines of sight? The moment we step outside we would be gunned down without a second thought. Have you gone mad?"_

 _Astonishingly, Arthur had kept his cool against Danse's shocked outburst, relying on reason rather than fire. "There's no time to debate the matter! Every second we waste, more blood is spilled and men are lost! Land us, soldier!"_

 _"_ _How dare you!?" Danse had whipped out his growl of disapproval. "I don't care whether we're friend or foe, I outrank you in both Brotherhood and Outcast chains, and while we're operating as a unit with a conjoined purpose, you will comply with my authority and greater experience! I see that I was wrong about you. Your reckless impulses are likely what got your squad killed back there, and I won't let history repeat itself! I'm landing us on the fringes."_

 _When Arthur's stomps resounded from behind him, Danse remembered how his back muscles had coiled in preparation of self-defence. But the young man did not attack, but pounded his one good fist down on the dashboard, the power of it rattling the entire canopy. "You land us on the fringe of the battle and we will never get a foot near them without being fired upon. Our calls for a ceasefire will go unheard, and we will either be pushed into cover behind an aircraft already on the verge of combustion, or we will die in vain. You trust me and land us in the crossfire, and I guarantee you I will bring this nonsense to a halt with as few words as possible."_

 _Danse's head had been a maelstrom of doubt and bewilderment, torn between logic and faith. He rarely acted on faith alone, the concept of doing such was implausible to his instinctive wiring. Instincts were a valuable source in combat, but to fall back on them entirely was foolish. Yet, he had fallen back on his instincts and decided to trust this enigmatic young soldier. There was just something about him that exuded competence._

 _The vertibird veered unsteadily over the raging battle and descended slowly but surely. Nervous sweat had beaded on Danse's brow as the hull lowered into the crossfire, stray rounds pinging off the steel and rousing his doubts again. Arthur had sealed the doors on the flank facing the Outcasts, leaving just the one side open for the Brotherhood to gape into and yell at the occupants to get clear._

 _When they were about to touchdown, Danse glanced back. Arthur had not donned his helmet. "For goodness sake, soldier! Get your helmet on! Do you want to catch a round in the head?"_

 _But Arthur had only turned an unfazed look upon him before presenting himself out from the cover of the hull, free for the Brotherhood to shoot on reflex and ask questions later._

 _His one arm was up in surrender. "Hold your fire, brothers!" his voice had boomed with the force Danse had been unaware he possessed._

 _The firing ceased, and gradually, the Outcasts fell silent as they realised the Brotherhood had stopped their counter fire._

 _"_ _Sentinel Maxson, sir!" someone bellowed. Danse's eyes had bulged in their sockets. Sentinel Maxson? Maxson, as in, descendant of the great Roger Maxson, founder of the Brotherhood of Steel?_

 _The same man reported the situation without the prompt. "The Outcasts initiated a pre-emptive strike as we fell back from the muties, we had no choice but to defend ourselves, sir!"_

 _The vertibird shuddered as Maxson's power armoured weight stepped out upon the bloodied soil. Warning shots from the Outcasts bit into the left hull, some even flecking at the canopy and Danse had to duck back into the load. At the sight of the Outcast black and red armour, the Brotherhood raised arms again and held their weapons aloft with uncertainty._

 _"_ _Easy!" Maxson steadied them. "He's with me. He aided me in reaching you, and even saved my life."_

 _At the lowering of weapons, Danse slowly stepped out from the vertibird and stood at Maxson's side, each movement clear and purposeful to keep the soldiers pacified._

 _"_ _We were all drawn to this site for the same purpose!" Arthur's voice retained its booming pitch to be heard by both forces. "To seek out and secure pre-war technology in order to protect our future. Protect it from mankind and his greed for knowledge that will have him destroying himself with the power he gains from it. But are we not doing just that right here, right now? Are we not killing ourselves over our greed for power?"_

 _The silence and its meaning had been chilling to the bone, even in the humid heat of the Wastes. Danse remembered how sweat had accumulated beneath his armour, yet the weight of Arthur's words had spread a chill of realisation over his skin._

 _"_ _You could say this about every war we fight, and some might use that against us, reasoning that we are no better than those that brought the world to its ruin. But together, we will be better, because we don't fight for power, we fight for purpose! Separately, can we say that to justify ourselves right now? Our infighting is the very same scourge that brought humanity to its knees, two hundred years ago! We seek the same end, so why are we fighting over it?"_

 _And then Maxson had said something that would spark the bond between him and Danse for years to come. "We're all Brotherhood deep down. Perhaps not brothers of the same steel, but steel, nevertheless."_

Danse finished with a faraway smile, staring into his empty beer bottle as his fingers deftly revolved it around. Ilya observed quietly, trying to sharpen her hazing eyes and focus on the implications.

"So you joined forces after that?"

He raised her an acknowledging nod, as if snapped out of deep memories. "Our teams cooperated in sweeping and searching the building's ruins, and we recovered some interesting tech. There was a minor debate over who took what, but Arthur—sorry, Maxson—"

"You don't need to pull formalities with me," Ilya assuaged.

"I know, it just seems disrespectful to refer to him by his first name, is all." He shrugged before continuing. "Maxson managed to settle it by offering it all to the Outcasts, if they would agree to escort him to Fort Independence where he could speak to Protector Casdin. From there, things eventually just fell into place. The first official conjoint mission between the Brotherhood and Outcasts was the infiltration of the Super Mutant hive near the building site, and the disarming of the atom bomb."

"So you and Maxson grew pretty close during all this."

"We formed a mutually beneficial companionship, yes." His attempt at making it sound as less mushy as possible was transparent, and Ilya buried her grin into her beer. Danse seemed too hazed with alcohol to notice. "During our spare time, which was rare, he would mentor me through developing my piloting skills..." A secretive little grin. "I think he saw my development as a sort of pet project."

That was fucking adorable, Ilya thought, despite herself and her aversion to Maxson. "Wow. I had no idea you guys had this whole bromance thing going on behind my back."

She immediately regretted her tongue, because Danse seemed offended by that. "What? No. Of course not. It's nothing like that. We just have a mutual respect for one another." Now he was flustered. "Not that there's anything wrong with two men forming a romantic relationship. Though I personally can't bear witness nor wish to..."

"Hey, I was just teasing," she soothed in good humour.

Hetero men were always so sensitive of being wrongly judged as gay. Was it really that big a deal? Though she supposed if she were judged as being lesbian—which had happened, especially with a military background, and her 'one of the boys' attitude—she would jump to correct people just as quickly. More so to keep herself viewed as an option by men of interest...

Had Danse's sudden offense and clarification been because she was of interest to him..?

Distraction time! Ilya pushed herself off from the bench, catching her balance before she toppled over. The alcohol had sunk in more than she had realised.

"You alright?" Danse fretted.

"Yeah... Might be a little drunk," she admitted with a laugh. "I tend to burn it off fast though."

He lifted himself from the bench and regarded her with unease. "You've lost a lot of weight, remember. It's probably hitting you harder than what you're used to."

"Mhm. Probably. Like I said, I burn through it fast. So, another beer?"

The brows flew high, incredulous. "I was about to suggest you take it easy."

"The night is still young, Danse! Come on! When was the last time you really let off some steam? I promise you'll feel free!"

* * *

Multiple beers and several more shots later, the paladin and knight were down on the ground resting up against the foot of Danse's bed, riveted to Ilya's Pip-Boy as she showed him how to play the various holotape games she had collected throughout her adventures. He took an instant liking to Zeta Invaders, excelling at shooting down alien UFO's, despite grizzling how wasteful it was to spend so much time and energy on something that ultimately amounted to nothing at the end of day. His deadly focus on it contradicted him, however.

When they had finished the pack of beer, and Danse had finally lost interest in Zeta Invaders, Ilya switched on the radio tab and left her Pip-Boy on top of Danse's bed, the music a mesh of pleasant sounds and vocals to add its ambience to the room.

"You really have a fondness for music, don't you," Danse remarked from her shoulder, gazing over at her with misty eyes. The flush of alcohol stained the crests of his cheeks, and judging by the heat in her cheeks, so were hers.

"Music is the soul of life," she serenaded whimsically, smiling into him as she found herself leaning against his shoulder.

"Hmm. Is that some type of pre-war sentiment?"

"Fuck if I know," she said, then chased it with a laugh.

Danse only smiled and leaned his head back blissfully, his eyes drifting closed, seeming to savour the atmosphere. Ilya gazed longingly at him, at the pleasing profile of his facial structure, at the scar slicing down through his brow. She could reach out and run her fingertip along it, feel the texture of its surface, maybe learn how it had happened. Maybe she could then run her fingertips over the soft surface of his lips, learn all there was to learn of them.

But she wasn't allowed to. She couldn't fully remember why. Something important.

Her gaze fell, but then sharpened on the way his chest rose and fell with his deep, steady breathing. She moved on to his hands as they rested freeform, his forearms propped up on his knees. God, even looking at his hands turned her on.

Ilya sighed and watched him a moment longer. "Do you like music?" The question came out of the blue.

His eyes peeled open and he took a second to comprehend before rolling his head her way. "A little. When I'm in the mood."

"Hm? Like what?"

"I'm more of a country-western and bluegrass fan myself."

"Country, huh?" she mimicked, her energy perking up at this news. Though she had no idea what bluegrass was. "I can see you listening to some country. But... what's bluegrass?"

He perked up too, his eyes enlarging. "Oh, you're in for a treat then, soldier." Unexpectedly, he dragged himself up from the floor, groaning in the effort, and stumbled haphazardly over to his filing cabinet. He went through multiple drawers, seemingly in disorientation, before he found what he wanted. A holotape. "I traded for this back in the Capital Wasteland. Cost me an arm and a leg, but it was well worth it. It should work on your Pip-Boy."

After a moment, he had it installed, and the music greeted the room in a fast-paced, organic instrumental opening. Instantly, a full, amused smile stretched onto Ilya's cheeks. Danse smiled back upon her, pleased at her apparent enjoyment of it. But Ilya wasn't smiling out of enjoyment. She was smiling out of hilarity.

When the vocal began, it complemented the tempo in such a jovial way that she found it hilarious to associate it with Danse. For reasons that were so simple it was stupid, Ilya's giggle snuck out of her chest on reflex, and eventually, grew into side-splitting peals of laughter. Within moments, she was rolling on the floor, while poor Danse stared down at her in bafflement.

Eventually, Ilya's gut began to ache with the sheer exuberance of her laughter, and she curled over into a ball in a futile attempt to smother herself. The music was switched off. Then, for reasons unknown, she heard Danse's laughter join in with hers. It was a hearty, seductive sound, rich in his chest as it revved to life and caressed her eardrums with its rare majesty.

She had never heard him fully laugh before.

It was what finally freed her from her own torture, enabling her to uncurl herself from the floor and gaze up at him in wondering delight from a sphinx-like position on her stomach. The laughter was dying away in him, but his face... It was the very definition of light. His eyes were bright and cradled by his joy, cheeks glowing with his inebriation and liveliness, and his smile, full.

She had never seen him fully smile before.

He stood idle for a long while, equally as entranced by her, and then stepped in to lower down into a kneel before her. "Come on. Let me help you up," his voice rumbled softly.

The scent of whiskey and beer on his breath was intoxicating. As his hands eased around her, one under an arm, the other at her waist, Ilya was completely at his mercy and melted in his hands, her body faltering her in the attempt at rising. She slipped, and Danse caught her falter with ease as she tumbled forward onto his chest.

Their faces came within an inch distance, but neither pulled away. They remained like that, kneeling on the ground, grasping onto each other, staring into souls in a moment of time that stood still for eternity.

Ilya was utterly consumed in Danse, his warmth, his scent, the way he was still grasping her to him. The blooming of his pupils ensnared her, drew her in deeper, evoked the emotion she could no longer deny.

Her hands drifted up from his chest, lingering over his firm jaw, tentative, and when her fingertips brushed at his furred skin he was roused from his daze within her, eyes flickering down to her lips like they had down in that quarry. Ilya's hand trembled as her fingertips guided it along his jawline, her thumb whispering across his lips. Soft, just like she had imagined, but firm. Her breath was shallow with how lost she was in his nearness, that when she drew in a deeper breath, a grain of sense was returned to her and she dropped her hand away from him.

 _We can't do this._

She was in the midst of dropping away from him when he moved for her. With the force and precision only a soldier could possess, he captured her lips with his, cutting off her gasp of shock, and their collision was like an atom bomb upon the earth. And just like the Great War, Danse ended Ilya's world and brought her back to life in that one moment. She was caught in a sensory explosion as her body was pulled flush to his, one hand firm at her jaw, the other enwrapping her waist. She melted into his warm structure at once, her hands clutching for him with a needful intensity that she could barely comprehend.

Their kiss morphed into something ravenous, mouths hungering for sweet entrance where hot breaths could break free. Their tongues entwined as hands were everywhere at once, pressing and pulling, teased by slips of skin that was otherwise encased by fabric. It wasn't enough.

Ilya gave a startled yelp as Danse growled in his greedy frustration and hoisted her, groping at the backs of her thighs to drag her body up with his as he stood. It felt beyond indulgent to be pressed so firmly to him, and she moulded her body around his, thighs wrapping his waist, as he secured her and awaited her lips once more. Her hands smoothed over to the back of his neck as her lips devoured him. The feel of him, the taste, the _reality_ was all a chaotic heaven.

 _This is real. Oh god, it's so real._

She felt him backing up slowly, steps unstable, either from the alcohol or the power of her lust that she flooded him with. When her fingers slid up through his hair and fisted for more, he gained his balance and drove forward. Ilya suddenly found herself propped upon the tool bench, engulfed by his hands and lips and passion.

She was unbound from her sense when his hot mouth seized the soft skin of her neck, pinching with his lips and massaging with his tongue. "Oh shit," she sighed as she arched for him, her breath coming in mouthing pants. The fire in her core kindled anew and wracked her body with hot flutters, rendering her a slave to their impulses, and Danse's desire.

As her body subtly rolled against his, unable to tame her aching, his large hands scoured her thighs and grasped her rump, thrusting her hips forward into his groin. Ilya gasped and moaned at the feel of his hardened arousal pressed into the heat of her own, and she granted him what he wanted, grabbing at the back of his neck for leverage and rolling her hips into him.

The deep groan he rewarded her with was divine, rumbling through his chest and into her blood. It impelled her into an animalistic frenzy, her hands roughing up over his taut abdomen and spreading across his chest with her nails, working up underneath his bomber. She pushed it from his shoulders, tugging it down over his arms as he shrugged it off and lost it with a careless toss. Her hands were back on him like magnetism, raking his muscles in her famine. Fuck. She needed those muscles _on_ her. She needed him _in_ her.

With another growl of frustration, Danse seemed to be just as hungry. His fingers found the zipper of her vault suit, and Ilya's pulse drummed with an extra shot of adrenaline as he pushed her back against the piping running along the wall to savour the revelation of her sacred flesh. Her chest heaved as he worked the zipper slowly, meticulously, exercising tremendous restraint. His eyes were hazed and eclipsed with passion, framed by a hard frown of concentration. He was so attentive and consumed by her body that Ilya couldn't help a smirk or keep her hand from reaching for his jaw, caressing the prickly texture of his stubble, needing to touch him, connect with his emotion in this moment. His eyes shot to hers and his free hand echoed hers, fingers tenderly tracing her jawline and caressing her cheek.

When the slips of her cleavage were released, his restraint abandoned him and he lunged for her mouth, lips expressing his starved ardour before they rode the path down her neck and to her breasts. Ilya sighed when he peeled back her suit to free all of her, and he took a moment to himself just to absorb the sight, then his hands were upon her while he kissed her mouth. Clutching, palming, fondling. Ilya moaned, and when his thumbs encircled her straining pinnacles she arched and whined.

Then his mouth took one of them, and she was in a whole new world. A small cry broke her lips as he suckled lightly and his tongue teased her, pulling on sharp, delicious sensations that shot right to her core. She pressed her chest closer to him and clung to his arms as he supported her up for his devouring.

As Danse was utterly immersed in the wonder of her breasts, like a kid in a candy store and showing no sign of breaking free from them, Ilya began to pick and pull at the buckles and straps of his uniform, craving his skin on hers. When she was finally successful, she practically ripped his uniform open and tore it from his chest, devoid of the captivated care he had exercised on her. A heated breath rolled past her lips as her fingers splayed up over the dusting of hair flaring out from the centre of his taut pectorals.

 _Oh sweet Atom._

Danse helped her and peeled away his uniform, letting it gather around his hips, where more hair trailed up to fade over the rolling valley of his abdomen. Ilya was salivating by now, hands travelling up each muscle, basking in his hot skin and the way his chest was surging with his lusty breath. He was struggling to be patient with her while she lingered, and she wanted to plant her lips on him and work her way up from his trail to his throat, but his patience wore out in a snap.

He grabbed her and smashed her up against his chest, their lips melding, skin on skin a rapturous embrace. Ilya felt pressure already mounting, the fire he had brought to life within her burning so hot it was vulnerable to a chain reaction, her every atom set to split her asunder at his whim.

The way his hand was now sliding up the inside of her thigh had her whimpering into his lips with need, her own hand straying down to his trail for where it ended. She broke from his lips and panted when his hand passed her open zipper and slipped inside her suit.

Then she tensed.

 _Nate..._

 _Can I bring him back?_

Her lock up wasn't lost on Danse. He saw and felt her hesitation, and it sobered him like a wash of ice. He took a grating inhale and pulled away, panting with arms slack at his sides, eyes dashing over the floor in rapid neural activity. Ilya remained upon the bench, catching her breath and trying to grasp the reality of what just happened.

"I-I'm sorry," Danse stuttered out, avoiding her eyes for the floor still. "I shouldn't have... This shouldn't have... your husband, and your state of mind... I crossed the line." He was scowling wickedly, fists gaining tension. "Took advantage."

Ilya exhaled in a gust. "No. No, it's not your fault. _I_ shouldn't have... shouldn't have started this. We can't—"

"No." His voice was taut, harsh. He locked eyes with her. "I acted first. This is my doing. I let it get this far. I knew where this was headed tonight and I didn't try hard enough to stop it."

"Danse, no—"

"I'm your superior and I failed to take command." His eyes darted involuntarily to her sneak of cleavage and stomach, the zipper still open. "I couldn't control myself," he growled and averted his eyes back to the floor. "This should never have happened. It puts everything we've accomplished at risk, our careers, our integrity, even the alliance. Fraternization will destabilize the faith in our leadership."

He was right, Ilya knew. This never should have happened. Too many things were more important than them. And... Nate. She nodded silently, gathering herself and self-consciously zipping up her vault suit, then raking a hand back through her tousled hair. When she lowered herself down from the bench, careful to keep her balance this time, she forced herself to look Danse straight in the eye.

"It's not your fault. I pushed this too far."

He was adamant. " _I_ let you—"

"So we both fucked up," she cut him off sternly. "So we make it right. This never happened. We move on. Nothing happened."

Danse stared at her for so long that she thought he had gone comatose. "We move on," he nodded sharply, expression carved of stone.

As Ilya fled Danse's quarters, she was caught in the torture of her own mind, tasting pain and anger and euphoria in unison. Her body was still raw from his touch, heart singing from his heat, memory echoing their shared pulse.

Sleep would be her only remedy tonight. Sleep, she doubted she could catch.

* * *

 **A/N:** Phew! So that was a long time coming, something had to give ;) This also marks my longest chapter yet! There was a lot going on in this chapter and it was quite a monster to pull out! Please let me know what you guys think :D

 **-** I just made Ilya the default SS age at 30, since my own age wouldn't work with her having spent years in the military, married, and popped out a kid, lol. Unless she was incredibly proactive, I guess...

-If you bring Danse with you to Goodneighbour and tell Magnolia that you don't like jazz, he will pipe up and say he likes country and bluegrass. When I googled bluegrass and listened to a sample, I literally cracked up laughing picturing Danse sitting at a campfire bobbing his head to it XD Idn why I found it so funny...

-So I lied, (accidentally) next chapter will kick-off Blind Betrayal. This one sorta kinda got away on me.


	41. Superior Firepower

**Superior Firepower**

* * *

It never happened. They move on.

Two simple notions, yet they were the most intractable notions Danse had ever faced.

That nebulous thing in her eyes, the feel of her body on his, the scent of her skin, and, steel be with him, the sounds he could pull from her... Harper, or Ilya... he was even at a loss for how to think of her now. Harper, his sister in steel. Ilya, his...

Wherever that thought was going, it was irrelevant.

Danse had caught little sleep, if any. He had awoken with his companion headache, but tenfold. His skin was tacky with stale, toxin-ridden sweat, still bare from last night.

Her fingers, eager, clawing, pulling, ripping, splaying.

When he lingered under the shower water, she infiltrated his mind with her bare body pressed to his, fingers slinking down his abdomen, her lips hovering upon his, breath hot and sweet. He would take her against the shower walls and...

Enough.

Danse felt himself swell with desire and double-time dunked his head under the running water, switching it to freezing and pronouncing that he deserved it, even while his nerve endings screamed.

No woman had ever consumed him so.

 _I'm beyond dreaming. I haven't even gotten that far before. I wouldn't know the first thing about how to please her. I would only disappoint her with my inexperience and complete inadequacy._

When he made a beeline for the mess, and more specifically the coffee machine, the smell of cooking food made his stomach curdle. So be it. No breakfast today, and three coffees instead. He inhaled the first, sloshed the second, and by round three, his head was clear enough to really compartmentalize his thoughts and gain clarity on the implications.

What had he done? He had ruined everything. He had betrayed himself, his morals, his integrity. He no longer deserved the honour of being a paladin. He no longer deserved her.

Harper was still grieving for her husband and her past, moving on from her mental breakdown, coping with the stresses of her responsibilities to the Minutemen and the alliance. And he had taken advantage, given in to his weakness for her... it shouldn't have been like that. It shouldn't have _been_ at all, but it shouldn't have been so... rough, fast, primal. She must think him just some beast driven by instinct. No wonder she had hesitated. What if he had hurt her? Her body was at a healthy state again, but barely, still so lithe. He should have expressed what she truly meant to him, not just what her body meant to him. He should have paced them, been gentler with her, given her time to adapt, treated her with patience and care and love...

Love.

Love? Ludicrous. He probably wouldn't even know love if it hit him full throttle in the face. No, it just shouldn't have happened, period. The Brotherhood was now and would forever be his only love.

* * *

It never happened. They move on.

That was bullshit and they both knew it.

 _You're going to destroy him, one way or another._

Ilya rolled over in her mattress and smothered her face in her hands. She had ruined everything. Danse's integrity, their relationship, after she had promised herself, and Maxson, that she wouldn't. How must he be feeling right now? No doubt he was blaming himself, questioning his loyalty, his dignity, lost and confused. He had seemed so angry afterward. That was her fault. She had meant to put him at ease and cheer him up, take his mind off the PTSD and all his other stresses. Instead, she had only made things worse for him.

Maxson was right. She was just a bad influence on him.

Ilya's insomnia had made a comeback through the night, tormenting her mind, entrapping her as a prisoner in her own head. All she could think of was him, all she could feel were his hands on her, his breath heating her skin, his powerful need. It had awakened the flame in her that had been dead for so long. She had no idea he felt like that about her. Just the reality of how much he had wanted her had her on the edge at a moment's whim.

If she hadn't frozen, would they have taken it all the way? Oh god, his hand, so close to her most vulnerable place. Danse, wanting her like that. All of her. It was surreal, still sinking in. Why did she freeze up?

The ring on her finger burned in weight, and she rolled her head from the pillow to gaze at it, twirling it around her finger with her thumb.

 _Nate. I'm so sorry. I still love you._

But she had dreamed of Danse for so long, denying it in her guilt-weaved state over betraying the memory of Nate. So that was how she let it happen? Drunk off their asses, in his personal quarters, aboard an airship with Elder Maxson in the very next room? No. It should have been perfect, lucid, where she could express her true emotions for him, tend to the places in his heart that softened just for her, pamper him with her affection and make him feel like a man by yielding where he pleased, learning of each other, reaching that peak in mutual ecstasy with patience and care and love...

Love.

Love? Bullshit. She couldn't fall in love with him, he deserved far better than her, some fucked up little sadist-junkie-torturer. She would destroy him to his core. Nate was now and would forever be her only love.

* * *

Showering had been a blur. Coffee had been her saviour. For but a second.

Danse had turned to the same saviour in the mess, and the moment their eyes caught on one another, the air had split and they had torn away in their entropy of pain. But Danse wasn't alone. Maxson had perched himself at the same table across from him, and they appeared to be sharing a coffee and a chat, until she walked into the room.

Now they were both eyeing her. Maxson was plain in his motive, clearly meaning for her to join them once she had grabbed her morning coffee. She had grown surprisingly attuned to his mannerisms in their few weeks working together. Danse... was painful as fuck, attempting to give the impression of professionalism, but whenever his eyes would meet hers he swiftly glanced off, tensed, and frowned. Damn, he looked haggard as hell.

Ilya cursed inwardly and sulked over to their table, warring with the simplest of choices of where to sit. Next to Danse, or Maxson? They were both in the centre of the table on each flank, so it was impossible to claim a seat to herself. They were both gawking up at her in expectancy, also seeming to dread the moment they had unwittingly created for her.

She sat next to Maxson. It was a colossal move of apocalyptic proportions. _Boom. Bam._ KAPOW!

It may have saved Danse the pain of her nearness, but the three were now sitting in stumped silence, processing the tactical underplay of the situation within the simple and stupid thing that it was. Every move one of them made was a suspected tactic.

All three of them were children.

Maxson cleared his throat and stirred, feigning comfort and poise in his chair. "I'm hoping we all had a restful sleep?"

"Yes, sir," Ilya and Danse lied in tandem.

Maxson's eyes probed them suspiciously, without even moving his head. The man wasn't a dimwit. "Now that you're both here, I wanted the chance to personally inform you that the time has come to advance our operations to the next phase. Your next assign awaits. I want you to report to Proctor Ingram at the airport. She has a special project that requires your immediate attention."

Both paladin and knight said nothing for a good few seconds. _Oh, fuck us sideways_. They were both hung over as hell. _What are the chances that we'll get our assignment tomorrow?_ she had said. Next time she should just shut her face.

"Yes, sir," Danse roused himself in a snap, sporting his typical display of enthusiasm. "We'll gear up and report as soon as we're able."

"Good. I'm also assuming that the two of you are still in agreement on working together?"

Danse showed no hesitation. "Absolutely, Elder. We've worked through our differences and are ready for anything." He didn't spare Ilya a hint of a glance. _It never happened. We move on._

"I'm glad to hear it." The elder turned his gaze upon her next. "And you're comfortable to entrust the Minutemen within our hands while you're absent? Danse has already been informed of his replacement and dismissed from his training duties. The trainees will now be reassigned under Paladin Bael's expertise. I can have his dossier sent to you and your lieutenants if you wish."

He really should have collaborated with her on that reassignment, but whatever. Ilya shook her head graciously, regretting the flare of her headache. "That won't be necessary, but thank you. I'm sure you're confident he was the best man for the job." Ronnie would put him in his place if he wasn't.

Maxson mirrored her graciousness and inclined his head. "I have every confidence in his ability." He pushed off from his chair and stood. "Now, I'm sure you don't need to be reminded, but you should make sure you fuel yourself with a good breakfast before heading out. You're going to need it."

The soldiers chorused their _yes, sirs_ and tried not to summon bile at the thought.

Maxson gave them a taut nod of finality. "With that settled, I'll leave you to your preparations. Good luck. Ad victoriam."

* * *

Danse barely spoke as they force-fed themselves and headed for the armoury. They traded only necessary words as they resupplied with Teagan, collaborating on weapon choice for ammo semblance, rationing out their meds, food, and water, and helping each other equip armour pieces.

Ilya opted for her officer's-issue black jumpsuit uniform, which she had scored under the pretence of being general of their conjoined militia. Teagan had let it slide. She tried not to tense up as Danse fastened the straps of her various leather armour pieces, but he was going about it with practiced dexterity, not even showing a crack of discomfort under his steel veneer. Ilya tried to follow his example as she returned the favour and strapped him up in his Brotherhood-issue polymer combat armour.

When she tested how her ornate machete—looted from the depths of the quarry—slotted through her specially made leather sheath, Danse gave her a critical look.

"You're taking _that_ with you?"

She clipped the sheath onto her shoulder harness. "For CQC."

Danse had never been as keen as her on getting up close and personal with his adversaries. He preferred mid-range, and hated when she closed in during combat, always barking at her to keep to formation. The tensing of his facial structure was all the disapproval he gave.

"I've been cleaning and sharpening it while I was cooped up in medical, I wanna get a feel for it in battle. Besides, you're always on about conserving ammo," she snarked while shrugging on the holster, and his brow gave a slight shrug in disgruntled agreement, letting it go.

He slipped her a Stimpak as they left Teagan's company. "Here. For the hangover," he explained quietly, as if it were a questionable chem. He had another in his hand for himself.

Ilya took it without a word and covertly pricked it into her thigh before anyone saw. Danse did the same, and then the two headed for the Flight Deck with feigned modesty.

* * *

Minutemen trainees were out in the training yard being reduced to puddles of sweat as they laboured in a set of push ups on the gravel. Ilya observed as Paladin Bael hounded them with incessant citations of perseverance and resolve, but he lacked the deep boom that Danse could summon from his depths. The secret project was still under wraps in the form of the giant circular tent as Ilya and Danse marched through the airport in search of Ingram. What appeared to be gantry steps upon a platform were peeking out from the bottom of the tent.

"Do you know what's under there?" Ilya asked of Danse. He afforded her a glance, and said nothing, pushing a pace ahead of her as Ingram and Doctor Li were spotted in the control centre over the courtyard. If he did know, he was under orders not to share with her.

"Ah, morning, Sunshines," Ingram flung her off-hand greeting as the two ascended the steps. "Glad you could make it." She was clad in her usual brassy sarcasm, which Ilya had taken an instant liking to upon first meeting her.

"Ingram," Danse parried her greeting plainly.

When Ilya stepped out from his wake, Ingram flashed a warm smile down at her. Doctor Li, across the way by one of the consoles, looked bitter as ever to accept them in contrast.

Ingram got straight to it. "So, I bet you're eager to get your hands dirty on our new project. How much has Maxson told you about it?"

"He didn't tell me anything," Ilya stated with a touch of annoyance.

Ingram shrugged a shoulder, a languid movement in her power armour frame. "Makes sense. We've been trying to keep it under wraps until the time was right. Come on, it's time for the big reveal." She ushered Ilya over to the forward consoles and gestured at the tent before them. A thrill seized Ilya's blood. "Unless you're as blind as a bat, I'm sure you've noticed that we've been building a gantry on the tarmac beneath that thing. Maxson and Kells have been looking for something that'll tip the balance when we go toe to toe with the Institute. Now the Prydwen might be a big beast, but she's not built for fighting. That's where our new project comes in."

The proctor waved a signal, and the tent was slowly peeled away to reveal a gargantuan, humanoid robot. Ilya didn't know exactly what she had been expecting, maybe a stationary plasma artillery of extreme range, but certainly not a giant fucking robot. Its limbs appeared agile but sturdy, its plating appeared well reinforced and brandished to a high polish, and its faceplate sported a narrow visor strip, making her wonder why. The Brotherhood really didn't fuck around when they said they were going to war. Alright, she had to hand it to them, they got her on this one.

"Liberty Prime," Ingram introduced proudly, grinning at Ilya's face. "The Brotherhood used it in the Capital Wasteland as a weapon against the Enclave. It's the most advanced robot the Brotherhood has ever had at its disposal. Unfortunately, Liberty Prime was destroyed in the line of duty. I've spent the better part of the last few years piecing him back together. And if you think that was easy, try rebuilding a protectron while you're blindfolded."

Ilya couldn't find words, so she angled a look back at Danse, arcing her brow as a silent question. _You knew about this and you didn't tell me?_

Danse answered with a wooden stare.

 _Note to self: Never piss off the Brotherhood._

Ingram went on. "It won't be long before Prime can walk and talk, but he's missing one last important element... his nukes. Without them, his offensive systems aren't operating at peak capacity."

Nukes. Because mass genocide's no fun without them. Hooah. Or more, ad victoriam. Despite the dangerous potential to harming innocent synths, and her son, Ilya couldn't help excitement building at the potential of wiping out the Dark Bloods with this monster. "What's Prime armed with?"

"Prime has two weapons systems: his eye laser and his nuke pack. They eye laser can target a hostile from hundreds of yards out and take it down with pinpoint accuracy. His nukes are modified Mark 28 Nuclear Bombs. They used to drop the things from bombers during the war," Ingram said with a hopeful tone to nudge at Ilya's remembrance. "Just one of the nukes is equivalent to about three or four Fat Man shells. Basically, whatever it hits isn't gettin' up again. His eye laser is almost ready to go, but without nukes to load into his pack, he's fighting at less than half his capability."

Ilya scoffed. "I'll run down to the Super-Duper Mart and pick some up."

To that, Ingram hummed, unimpressed. "Cute. I wish it was that simple. The Commonwealth was a major staging area for the military's air force, so we assumed we wouldn't have trouble finding the bombs. But since we arrived, our scouting teams haven't located a single bomb."

"That's going to be a problem." They all turned at Doctor Li's sudden input. "Without a fully loaded nuke pack, Prime won't have the firepower to take on the Institute."

"Great..." Ilya exercised her sarcasm, "that's just great."

But Ingram jumped in with an appeasing gesture. "Before you give up hope, there's actually a silver lining here. Proctor Quinlan has located some records regarding a military installation which was used as a nuclear weapon storage facility. We're fairly certain this included a stockpile of the Mark 28's. The catch is that the installation is located somewhere within the Glowing Sea."

"Oh no. Not again." Ilya was starting to see where this was going, and she tossed a knowing look Danse's way. His brow was hard to commit to his duty.

"Yep..." Ingram gave a bitter grin, "you better stock back up on the anti-radiation gear. Scribe Haylen's established a communication's point on the frontier of the Glowing Sea. I suggest you head out there first and establish a signal protocol with her so that the nukes can be airlifted out once you've located them. Hopefully by the time you've returned, we'll be ready to wake Prime up and you can say hello. Good luck. But there's a reason you two are Maxson's best unit, so I'm sure you won't need it."

* * *

The thrill of excitement in Ilya's blood at the very existence of Liberty Prime was abating, and caution was taking over. What if she couldn't get the innocent synths out? What if she couldn't talk Shaun down? She needed to report to the Railroad and organise something as soon as she got back from this mission, so she needed to think up an excuse to split from the airport without Maxson thinking she was lagging him out. Fuck. It was back to playing the triple agent again to try and save everyone. And if things between her and Maxson ever turned sour, to the point of splitting the alliance, then the Minutemen were in immense danger with that robot in the stakes. Ingram may be right that her and Danse were his most efficient unit, but she suspected the elder had other reasons in assigning them this mission, specifically in relation to her allegiance. He was testing her dedication to the Brotherhood, and this alliance.

She was caught in one hell of a hard place.

If she completed the mission and delivered this arsenal of nukes, she was potentially arming an enemy and setting her own throat to be slit. If she refused, she could bet her ass that Maxson would give her an ultimatum with the alliance. And Danse hadn't given her a hint of warning this entire time. It just reinforced the fact that he would always put the Brotherhood first, and as much as it irked her that he kept her in the dark, she couldn't fault him it.

She peered across at him as they strode for the awaiting vertibird in their power armour. "Liberty Prime... your thoughts?"

He slotted his helmet on and yanked the seals. "Rebuilding Liberty Prime will ensure our victory over our adversaries in the Commonwealth."

"You don't think it's a little overkill?"

He trudged on in silence for a moment. "True peace can only be achieved by superior firepower."

And he wondered why she had called him a barbarian. Ilya made no response. He was blunt. Cold. It was as if he had reverted back to his old self before they formed a friendship. Was he angry at her, or himself? She frowned and slotted her own helmet on.

The airlift to Waypoint Echo was wrought in silence. Even the pilot sensed the tension and withheld any chatter. The green of the Glowing Sea created a gauzy aurora in the distance, sliding through the overcast skies that the region bore. By the time the vertibird touched down near the waypoint, they were in a grey, drizzling soup.

The two dismounted and strode for the small camp detailed by barricades and manned by two armed soldiers. A radio beacon connected to a terminal, which Scribe Haylen stepped away from to greet them with a warm smile.

"Paladin Danse, Knight Harper. It's good to see you two again."

The two removed their helmets to return her greeting. Ilya gave the woman a fond nod. It was good to see her again, too. During the days of her recruitment under Danse, Haylen had sharply contrasted Knight Rhys' sour attitude, and Ilya had taken to her in a snap.

"You too, Haylen. It's been a while," Danse replied just as warmly, a considerable shift in his reception of Ilya right now. She didn't miss the glimmer in Haylen's eyes at his return. Ilya never had figured out if the scribe had a crush on the man, or was just in awe of him, much like she herself had been at first. She should be feeling a touch of jealousy right now, but she just couldn't harbour any ill feelings toward Haylen; she was too much of a sweetheart.

Haylen managed to pull her attention away from Danse and to Ilya. "I've been hearing a lot about you and the alliance with the Minutemen you brokered with Elder Maxson. General, now, huh? Impressive. Even Rhys was impressed by the outcome, though he tries not to show it." Her smirk made Ilya smirk back. "You've come a long way since you stumbled into the Cambridge Police Station."

"Thanks, Haylen," Ilya huffed a small laugh to shrug off the praise. "I assume the place is still in one piece," she added with a teasing undertone.

"We're doing the best that we can. We've had the occasional synth attack, but so far we've been able to keep them from overrunning us. Thanks to the Minutemen reinforcements, I'd say that site was secure and will be well looked after when we ship out for the Rad Lands."

"You're shipping out there, too?" Maxson was leaving a stabilising skeleton force behind in Cambridge, and Ilya had assumed Haylen would stay behind with them.

"Yeah, next week it should be," Haylen confirmed. "I volunteered for the medical detail, as well as technical support. You know, order of the scribe service. It'll be dangerous, I know, but I didn't sign up with the Brotherhood to sit out on big opportunities of discovery like this."

Danse was nodding proudly at his former squad member. "Which was why I was more than proud to have you on my team during our recon of the Commonwealth."

That sparkling smile returned to the woman's face. "Thank you, sir. It was truly an honour to be accepted."

Ilya skipped her eyes between their exchange and kept quiet, letting them have their moment. She knew Danse didn't form bonds lightly, and Haylen was obviously important to him... though her primordial female instinct was egging her to be jealously possessive...

Haylen sensed their stall in progress. "Anyway, I know you don't have time for small talk, so I'll get right to it. I've had the men set up the equipment we'll need to pinpoint you once you've found the bombs." She produced a blocky device about the diameter of her head. "We've rigged up this distress pulser to emit a unique tone that we'll be listening for. When you find the bombs, plant the pulser, and we'll handle the rest. After that, you should probably head back to Proctor Ingram and bring her your report."

Ilya received the pulser and turned it over in her metal hand. "I hope this plan works," she commented with false optimism, not relishing the thought of waiting out there any longer than they had to.

Haylen turned to a look of consternation. "Look, I know you've been through the Glowing Sea before, but remember to keep an eye on your Geiger counter. If you don't, the radiation will cook you from the inside out." With that, she perked up again and slapped at Ilya's reinforced shoulder. "Good luck, you two." Ilya mentally noted that that marked their third wish for luck today. Haylen's eyes then caught Danse before the two could depart. "Bring us back those bombs, but also yourselves... in one piece."

Danse dipped his head in appreciation before slipping his helmet back on. "Will do, Haylen. See you when we get back."

* * *

Their airborne entry into the Glowing Sea was as expected, doused with radioactive murk and the rolling of thunder. The desolation became a continual drift below them, only the pools of scalding irradiation or the occasional beast breaking it.

"It's places like this that make me doubt the future of humanity." Danse was overlooking the landscape with a hand on the upper support.

Ilya nodded in silence. Tension between them seemed a little less pronounced during the airlift. They had even engaged in some tactical chatter on their way inbound, agreeing to ban the use of explosives inside the facility, and with Ilya winning a customary game of paper scissors rock for the right to be out on point. Danse hadn't appreciated her making him look less than professional in front of the pilot, however. The fact that she had even managed to talk him into playing for point meant he was softening up again, though.

Their destination came into view; it was pyramidal in structure, with smooth flanks of concrete or some other material. The surrounding zone was littered with crates, most housing what Ilya guessed were Mark 28's. Like Ingram had explained, they did look like giant Fat Man mini-nukes.

"Better not drop on one of those," Danse chimed, supposedly to lighten the mood between them. Ilya faked a chuckle, just to make him feel better. At least he was trying. He nudged the back of the pilot's chair. "Thanks for the lift, Lancer-Knight. See you again for pickup." Then he turned back to Ilya. "Come on. We get in, locate the bombs, get out. Simple." With that, he dropped from the vertibird and landed in a spatter of muck below.

She followed suit, careful not to land too near to him like she had when dropping from the Prydwen. Their vertibird roared away as they approached the entrance into the facility—simple steel doors.

"Sentinel Site Prescott," Danse voiced as he stood gaping up at the height of the facility.

"You come here often?"

His helmet flicked in her direction before he huffed in mild amusement. "Only for the peace and quiet."

Ilya huffed back at him and then drew her laser rifle. "Who needs peace and quiet when you have superior firepower?"

He opted to stay quiet after that bite as he drew his own rifle and gestured with the barrel for her to take up point. Humour was the best medicine for tension. At least they still had that going for them.

The doorway opened up to a large security bulkhead, and upon wheeling the handle and letting it slide open, it reminded Ilya of the entranceway into a vault. She held her weapon aloft as she proceeded inside, quickly snapping her sights in each direction as they came out along a catwalk overlooking the facility's interior. The air was murky, and emergency lights were flashing along the walls to accompany the constant siren.

"It appears that this facility is more than just bomb disposal. It's been converted into a launching silo as well," Danse observed as he approached the barrier along the catwalk. He was right, as large-scale launching tubes reached up from the chasm below them.

Ilya took a brief look down at the trenches running beneath the tubes. "The munitions depot should be below us somewhere, along with some ferals, I'm betting. Let's get this over with."

Danse issued her a nod. "You watch my back, I'll watch yours."

They moved down through the facility with swift efficiency, working their way along the control rooms and walkways that made a spiralling path around the silo. When moving through one of the control rooms, Ilya just happened to score a comic book resting atop a console, stuffing it into the utility pouch fastened at her armour's hip.

"Comic books?" Danse asked with a judgemental tone, watching her with impatience. "I always thought they were a waste of time."

She really couldn't think of a smartass comeback to that, so she just gave him her metal finger. His reaction was hidden within his helmet.

Not a single feral had made an appearance as they reached the bottom of the launching chasm, shutting down the facility's state of readiness in order to breach the exhaust trenches. They came to a ramp in the trenches leading into a maintenance tunnel, where it would hopefully lead them into the munitions depot. Only the skeletons of the pre-war workers remained. Danse didn't like it.

"Keep a tight formation in here," he warned Ilya, his steps moving up nearer on her six. "I don't want to lose you to something we can't see."

It was spoken in the manner of a squad leader, but it still caused her to reflect on his word choice and the slight vulnerability in his voice. It provoked her inherent female inclination of feeling flattered by his typical male protectiveness, but she still grinned to herself under her helmet. "They're just some ferals," she teased. What did he think she was, some defenceless damsel? Pfft.

"Just keep your guard up. You never know what's lurking in these tunnels," he responded evenly, assuming a firm grip of his rifle. "The first thing that jumps out at us is getting a laser to the face."

As Ilya moved up, scuffling resounded through the dirt under her feet, and she shifted her sights from the tunnel. As she had expected, molerats burrowed out from the dirt and ambushed their prey, snarling and snipping at their metal boots. Ilya and Danse barely even reacted, kicking and stomping the dirty little pests until they were lumps of pulp.

"Not even worth a laser to the face," Ilya drawled.

Danse just stood looking down at their bloodied corpses. "Ugly little things, aren't they?"

She just laughed at his _philosophical_ review of the battle. But her laughter was cut short by the sudden trembling in the ramp she was standing on, then the rushed pattering of many bare feet coming up behind her. She tried to round in her power armour and swing around her barrel, but the movement was too slow as the hoard of ferals was upon her.

"Ferals!" Danse gave a belated cry, but she was in his firing lane.

Clawed limbs were thrown out to bash into her armour, and they threw themselves at her as one mass. Ilya tumbled down under their weight, grunting in the impact with the ground, her hangover shooting up through her skull. They thrashed and clawed at her plating while she thrashed at them in return, trying to push them off and away from her helmet. Teeth came out to bite at the seals around her neck and the air supply tubing.

Lasers speared down at the mass atop her, bodies dematerialising into ash and sifting over Ilya's visor, effectively blinding her. She fumbled around behind her shoulder for the grip of her machete, but felt her arms being tugged at by the ferals. They were strong for their lankiness, and she just couldn't reach back for it.

She heard Danse give a roar overhead, and then the sounds of metal impacting bones, maybe him kicking or bashing them off her with his rifle. Each impact lessened the weight on her, and soon the number of limbs tugging at her arms was lessened enough to where she could reach back for her machete. Shaking her head to clear her visor of ash, she sighted the ferals prying at her chestplate and slashed out at them. Bodies were severed like butter and rotten organs spilled out over her.

Danse kicked off the last feral, and she finished it with a backslash, the blade beheading it smoothly. Damn, this thing was _nice._ While she was busy admiring the machete, Danse gave her a hand up. "You alright?"

Ilya breathed and brushed off a ribbon of intestine hanging off her torso. "Yeah, aside from my ego..."

Surprisingly, Danse chuckled at her expense. "Perhaps you should have listened when I told you to keep your guard up."

"Mhm. Whatever," she brushed him off in good humour. They were having way too much fun for just a sweep and search in this gloomy, irradiated shithole. Despite it, and the tension from last night, it was good to be back out in the field with just him.

They moved through the tunnels on high alert, sweeping crew quarters, dispatching the odd feral ambushes and covering each other's backs, and cutting through branching caves where the tunnel had caved in and blocked their path.

"I hope this tunnel's stable. I don't plan on getting buried alive today." Danse was awfully chatty today, too, Ilya thought silently. Must be due to getting back out in the field.

Finally, the tunnels gave way to a loading area, a forklift surrounded by a few crates of Mark 28's. An industrial cargo doorway sealed them off from proceeding, but there was a doorway up to its left that they could exploit. Danse insisted on breaching it first. Ilya followed him through it and up a set of steps, where they came out into another control room. And a contact.

Danse snapped to and raised his rifle. "Hands! Up where I can see them!"

Ilya peered around his shoulder to see a Child of Atom in his drab robes, an older man with a bald scalp and a face sliced with wrinkles. He did as the paladin ordered and lifted his hands, though he was eerily calm about it. She also didn't fail to notice the assaultron off to the side, standing on alert in a combat stance, pincers angled toward Danse.

"State your purpose, strangers. You walk on Atom's hallowed ground," the man spoke with that eerie calm.

Before Danse could state his purpose with something offensive, Ilya placed a metal hand on his arm to pacify him. She spoke directly to the man. "It's alright, brother. I'm a Child of Atom, too. I'm part of a church up north. The Nucleus. Near a town called Far Harbour," she said, dropping the name in hope.

The man's wrinkles came to life in recognition of the town name. "Far Harbour? You've seen Atom's holy veil? But you have travelled so far. I apologize. I-I will not keep you from finishing your pilgrimage." He offered out a piece of paper and Ilya took it, skimming it to see that it was a password. "Take this and prepare to enter His inner sanctum. Follow the brilliance of the Glow, and it shall lead you to the relics." A smile cracked through his look of shock. "May Atom's radiance warm your soul." Then he simply walked off to a corner and sat in a chair, sitting listlessly.

Danse slanted her his surprise. "...Well played..."

She heaved a shoulder and stepped over to the terminal she guessed was connected to the cargo doors. With a few keystrokes, she had released the lock on the doors. "There."

Danse nodded and turned back for the exit, his visors lingering on the holy man a moment before leaving. When Ilya followed in his footsteps, the man spoke in her wake.

"May Atom guide you, sister."

"Thanks..." She couldn't get out of there fast enough, and made sure to shut the door again behind her, in case he had a change of heart and decided she wasn't worthy of Atom's relics.

"Well that was one of the oddest exchanges I've had in a while," Danse commented as he waited for her. "The Children of Atom are nothing but a cult filled with lowlife scum. I wasn't aware that you were so familiar with them."

 _Here we go._ "Nick and I had some dealings with them at Far Harbour. We managed to broker a peace between them and the locals. They're a lot more peaceful than the ones here in the Commonwealth..." At the slight cocking of his head, she treaded carefully. "I kinda came to respect them and their beliefs..."

She could tell that he tried not to scoff at her. "Human's that worship radiation? I don't even know where to begin..."

"Everyone has the right to believe in what they want," she expressed civilly, keeping herself patient with his expected bigotry. "And they aren't hurting anyone..." She shrugged, "Well, anymore, anyway. They were just misunderstood."

He explored her in silence for a moment, then he just grunted. "Whoever this 'Atom' is, I bet he's no match for the might of the Brotherhood."

 _Good talk._ Ilya kept her thoughts to herself and moved on, pushing open the cargo doors. There it was. The munitions depot, chock full of Mark 28's lined in aisles and piled high in their abundant glory. The two soldiers stood just to absorb the sight a moment.

"Mission accomplished." Danse walked the aisles to examine the crates while Ilya placed down the distress pulser and set it on. "Now that this site's been secured, you should return to the airport immediately. I'll remain on watch until the vertibirds arrive."

She frowned and fell in behind him as he surveyed, not liking the idea of leaving him out here alone. "Is that really necessary?"

"Absolutely. Elder Maxson's orders were quite clear. I'm not to take my eyes off these bombs until every one of them has been counted, tested, and loaded. If we want Liberty Prime to reach peak fighting efficiency, we can't afford to lose this stockpile." He stopped to turn his visor back on her. "Dismissed... Knight."

Not knowing how to counter that argument, Ilya could only nod her acceptance as he strolled further down the aisle. She was about to turn for the exit, but halted the pivot. "Danse?" He stopped and looked back at her. "Are we... okay?"

He stood idle for a time, metal limbs slack. "We're fine, Harper. See you back on the Prydwen."

* * *

The homebound flight was a lonely one. Ilya knew they weren't fine. They could pull on the humour all they liked, but nothing could ever smokescreen what had happened between them. They had shared a realm of intimacy within one another that would follow them forever, echoes of it seeping free every time their eyes met. She would never think of Danse the same way again, and she knew he would never think of her the same way again either.

Were they just sifting through the ruins of a lost friendship?

She didn't want it to come to that... but despite her best attempts to make it work, it was as if the world was against them. Or maybe it was just her. No matter what she did, she always fucked it up.

Leaving her bloodied power armour behind the forward barricades at the airport, Ilya wandered over the tarmac for the control centre, her eyes glued up on Liberty Prime, standing tall and proud for the world to see. By now, the Institute surely knew about him, and were probably shitting themselves scrambling for a plan of defence. It would be clear to Shaun by now that she wasn't coming back to him, after never meeting with his courser for that synth retrieval at Libertalia. She hated to think what thoughts were going through his mind right now, and if he suspected she was involved with the Brotherhood. He probably already knew, and that she was the general of the Minutemen, and also that she was an agent for the Railroad, too.

In thinking that, she reminded herself to think of a way of skipping out after reporting to Ingram to contact the Railroad. With the Brotherhood progressing on their final assault, they needed to get those synths out of there pronto. God, if Deacon knew she was about to arm a giant robot set to commit mass genocide of synths, he would flip his tits. Maybe she could find a way of getting Shaun out with the synths... sedate and sneak him out in a body bag before the attack. But he would never forgive her for destroying his life's work, and all of his people...

How had she gotten herself right in the middle of everything, and ended up caring so much for people in all factions involved? She realised it was the bane that a triple agent risked. She could only blame herself.

"Hey, Harper!" Ingram's rowdy call shattered her cycle of turmoil. "Get your ass up here, would you? You wanna say hello to Prime or not?" When Ilya plodded her way up the steps, Ingram's grin almost blinded her. "Looks like the Mark 28's are gonna do the trick. That was a good find."

Doctor Li was tapping at one of the consoles, not even sparing Ilya a glance. "I'll work with your team to ensure that Prime's bombs remain stable after they're loaded into his pack. It won't be too much of a problem."

Ingram aimed a sincere look at the icy woman. "Well, Doctor Li, I have to admit, we couldn't have done this without you."

The doctor hummed away the praise, still working the console. "It's a little early to begin celebrating, Proctor Ingram. We haven't fully thrown the switch on Liberty Prime and I'm just hoping all the work I've done to keep his systems stable are going to hold."

Ilya cast a nervous look at Prime and frowned, visions playing through her mind of him having a meltdown and destroying the entire airport. "Are you sure this is safe?"

"Of course," Ingram assured. "I've checked every connection, every circuit myself... Prime will hold together."

At that, Doctor Li leaned back from the consoles and turned their way. "Proctor? All the readouts look green. I think it's time for you to perform the power shunt."

"Actually, I think I'm gonna let you press the button," Ingram smiled down on Ilya, and there was a fondness in her eyes that Ilya had never seen before. "After all, without your help, we'd still be staring at a pile of disassembled parts."

Doctor Li was quick to interject. "It would be better if a trained technician performed that task." She received a stern eye from the proctor. "But... I suppose you deserve to be the one to do it."

With an encouraging gesture from Ingram, Ilya nodded and stepped to the power transfer switch. It was, of course, an obnoxiously big red button, the kind that demanded to be pushed for no sake other than to satisfying human curiosity. She couldn't deny the childish excitement bubbling up her blood at seeing the robot come to life. It didn't seem right that Danse wasn't here to see it with her. She wondered how things were going out in the Glowing Sea, loading up the nukes.

Regretting that he would miss Prime's activation, she palmed the button.

At once, the robot's voice reigned over the airport in loud sonority. "Liberty Prime... back online." Steam exuded from the power couplings keeping him attached to the gantry, and his arms quivered in his joints as if with anticipation.

Ingram attended her console. "All right, let's run a basic diagnostic on him."

Prime's voice echoed out again. "Diagnostic command: accepted." His fists rotated at the wrist, spinning rapidly.

"Give him a moment, he needs to adjust to his new configuration," Doctor Li advised.

"Voice module... online. Audio functionality test... initialised. Designation: Liberty Prime Mark II. Mission: the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska. Primary targets: any and all Red Chinese invaders."

The Red Menace, Ilya thought with a sudden shiver.

Ingram was nodding. "Now let me run a system analysis and battle readiness check..."

"Liberty Prime full system analysis. All systems: nominal. Weapons: hot. Warning: Nuclear weapon payload depleted. Reload required. Warning: power core offline. Running on external power only. Core restart recommended. Ability to repel Red Chinese invaders: compromised."

"I've got green lights across the board here. He's looking good from where I'm sitting," the proctor affirmed, stepping away from her console with satisfaction. "Doctor, if you wouldn't mind keeping an eye on the big guy here, I'd appreciate it." Doctor Li only nodded her acknowledgement. Ingram turned to Ilya, who was feeling somewhere between awe and guilt. "Well I have to admit, I wasn't sure we'd be able to pull it off, but Liberty Prime's looking pretty good."

Ilya forced a smile. "What was that he said about his power core?"

"Prime's in top shape, but his nuclear engine needs to be restarted. Right now, we have him running off of the Prydwen's engines. Once I get that sorted out, we'll send him off to kick in the Institute's front door." The woman's devilish grin paired with her wild mass of hair gave her a child-like aspect all of a sudden. It was a giant nuke-throwing, eye-lasering robot, and Ilya couldn't blame her.

 _So he's dependent on the Prydwen. If I ever need to sabotage the thing, I'll know where to cut its power supply..._

Oblivious to Ilya's thoughts, Ingram went on. "Before you head off to your next assignment, I have something for you." She reached back for something atop the consoles, which Ilya hadn't previously noticed. "I came up with this little beauty myself. I think it'll add a bit more punch to your power armour. It's a medic pump, which will automatically feed your system with Stimpak's when it senses trauma to your body."

"Thanks, Ingram." Ilya accepted it with curiosity. Danse could probably benefit from it more than she could. "Damn, I didn't get anything for you."

Ingram cracked another wide grin. "Sure you did. It's that big metal behemoth standing over there." Ilya could only chuckle and nod in realisation. "Anyway, that's enough of that," the proctor decided. "You better hightail it up to the Prydwen. Elder Maxson said he needed to speak to you as soon as you were done here. And... thank you, Knight. Without you, none of this would have been possible."

"You're welcome, Ingram. If Prime can help keep the Commonwealth safe from the Institute and the Dark Bloods, then he's worth all the shit it took to get him up and running." _And both the Railroad and Minutemen_ _jumping on my ass at the risk he poses._

Parting company, Ilya took her power armour to the vertibird to catch a ride up to the Prydwen. What did Maxson want now? All she wanted to do was hang up her armour, take a shower, chill with Dogmeat and stew over her mounting dilemma while she waited for Danse to get back. She just couldn't get a break from Maxson, and really wasn't in the mood for his browbeating.

This better be good.

* * *

 **A/N:** Many of Danse's lines were in-game. Including his "True peace can only be achieved by superior firepower." Yep. That's mah boy.

 **-Bianca-** Thank you so much for your words, you're a real trooper and your support really means a lot :')


	42. Blind Betrayal

**Blind Betrayal**

* * *

The moment Ilya breached the hatchway from the Flight Deck, she felt the hostility rolling off Maxson from the observation bridge. It was heat like none other, a continual wave across the distance between them. She disembarked from her power armour and approached with steady, cautious steps, eyeing his demeanour. He stood, hands to back, chin lowered to receive her, a shadow about his gaze as he just stared. She felt the weight of that stare like she never had before. He was a demon in man-skin. This was more than their typical power-play clashes.

Something was wrong.

When she passed into his domain, he stepped in to meet her, coiled. "Is there anything you wish to tell me, Knight?" The question was contained with forced civility, but had a threatening edge.

Shit. Did he find out about her torturing and killing Doom-Guy? That Shaun was the director of the Institute? That she and Danse had fraternized?

Ilya slipped into her hardened guise, halted before his shadow, and tilted her head in disdain. "I'm not sure I like how you're asking me that."

Maxson kept up his forced civility, though his brow was a harsh outcrop. "And I don't appreciate being betrayed by my own soldiers." Her own brow pinched at him in irate confusion. "Proctor Quinlan completed the decryption of the data you retrieved from the Institute. A portion of his findings included a list of synths that went missing or escaped from their underground facility. After careful analysis of the information, we've discovered something... unprecedented." His next words slid out through his teeth. "Paladin Danse is a perfect match for one of the synths on that list."

The world stopped.

 _Danse. Synth._

Ilya's mind gummed up. "Synth? I... I don't understand..." Maxson just continued to stare, so acutely it unnerved her. _Danse is a synth?_ A cold ripple of shock overtook her. "The data must—" she blurted loudly in denial, then caught herself and dimmed her voice. "The data must be faulty."

"The findings have been validated by multiple sources," Maxson explained methodically, though his words dripped bitterly from his tongue. "Quinlan wouldn't have brought this to me if he wasn't one hundred percent certain of the results. The data you brought back included a record of each subject's DNA. We keep the same information on file for all of our soldiers. Paladin Danse's DNA is a perfect match for a synth they called 'M7-97.'"

 _M7-97._ It didn't mean anything to her, but her subconscious insisted on repeating the name to her over and over. Ilya's heart was thrashing in cold panic, her ears booming with each pump of that cold blood. Her world was so distant. _No. No. No. No. No._ "No. He can't be. He's been set up. Framed."

She received cold eyes of severity. "Don't insult the legitimacy of my staff or my judgement in their findings. The evidence is irrefutable." His beard bristled as his jaw hardened, clenching in the fumes that roiled beneath his skin. "To make matters worse, he's gone AWOL. Disappeared without a trace."

She stared at the elder in horror. He ran? Oh god... Maxson was still analysing her reactions even as he spoke, and it grew more unsettling the more he spoke on, as anger was audibly mounting in his voice. She felt like prey under the merciless gaze of a predator.

"His sudden absence simply reinforces our conclusion that M7-97 and Paladin Danse are one in the same." Hearing him state it aloud made nausea assail her. "I'm finding it difficult to believe that he never confided in you and then swore you to secrecy."

That accusation jolted Ilya into panic for herself in this situation. Given all the lies she and Danse had spun Maxson in the past, and Maxson's obvious suspicions, it was understandable he would accuse her of knowing this. She shook her head. "I had no idea..." it came out in a meek voice, against her intention.

Maxson took full advantage. "Don't take me for a fool, Knight! I've not been blind to you and Danse conspiring behind my back and covering your tracks with lies. His swaying loyalty to me because of your poisonous tongue, your leadership of the Minutemen, your AWOL stint and his supposed innocence in it, Clay-Crawler's convenient disappearance..." His eyes were striking in their cold grasp on her. "I had let it slide because I knew, or _thought_ I knew, that Danse would never intentionally endanger the Brotherhood, and that your manipulation was solely to blame." A pause, and the betrayal was raw. "But I was wrong. You weren't the real enemy. Danse was. You were just his accomplice. You both played me, very well, I must admit. But not well enough."

The cold thrashing of her heart turned hot in a crack. "I didn't know, Maxson! I had no idea this whole time. No idea! Yes, I lied about a lot of things, and yes, so did Danse, but I didn't lie about this! That he's a fucking synth? I had no idea!" The heat quickly melted and she felt it ooze from her veins. "Fuck!" Hands that were aquiver clawed up through her hair and she paced away, breathing out through pursed lips. "He's a synth? Danse is a synth. I just..."

Last night. Skin, heat, pulse. His eyes. Brown, beautiful, betraying...

She shook her head and rolled herself back in Maxson's direction, pressing at her temple and sighing a quake. "I just don't... this can't be real."

Maxson's eyes narrowed into her with his uncanny ability to extract what he willed from her soul. "Hm. Your outburst leads me to believe I've misjudged you..." His soft tone of surprise made her stop her pacing. But then there was a sudden hardening in him again, shoulders squaring off beneath his battlecoat. "Which means I've decided to take you at your word. However, that doesn't absolve you of your duty." Words became clipped, carved by repugnance. "Danse is a synth. He represents everything we hate... a _monstrosity_ of technology!"

Ilya drew her breath weakly. _Danse. A monstrosity of technology..._

The elder managed to regain some composure, assuming his clinical air to administer his resolution. "Our mission in the Commonwealth is clear. The Institute and its creations need to be destroyed in order to preserve our future." As his eyes bore deeper into hers, she was witness to a glimmer of emotion slipping through his veneer. "Which leaves me facing the most difficult order I've ever given." But darkness healed the crack of emotion. "I'm ordering you, to hunt down Danse, and execute him."

 _Kill Danse._ Something in Ilya's heart contracted. She stood cold, seeing right through Maxson for a moment before her brain grasped his words. How could he just want Danse dead? "There must be some other way."

"Absolutely not. My decision is final."

She stared at him in disbelief. His cold eyes were unwavering, whatever had allowed his emotion to crack through was now cast to his abyss. So he was that heartless. She had thought him an enigma, a mystery holding both good and evil. So this was his true nature; evil. How he could just stand there, throwing around his power in his personal pain and order her to kill Danse, a friend to both of them, enraged her, awakened her fury. Fire crackling beneath her skin, she stood firm and lifted her chin, struggling against that fury. "I won't do it. Danse deserves a chance to explain himself."

Maxson's upper lip twitched in his own fury. "You _will_ do it. This is not up for judgement or debate. I'm giving you a direct order, Knight, and I expect you to follow it without question!"

"No!"

His shock was sharp.

"Fuck you and your order! Maybe he's a synth and a traitor, but how can you just order him dead, after everything you two have been through together?" Ilya didn't miss the fluctuation through the man's eyes. She pushed her pursuit. "He cares about you, Maxson... more than you might even know." The way her words had impacted him, breaking through his armour, the way his eyes were now wavering, caught in hers, it made her hunt for the enigma in him once more. It was in there. It had to be. She stepped in to him. "And I know you care about him."

Maxson was fixed on her, pain woven deep, so lost in himself that her nearness didn't flinch off his reflexes.

"You don't have to do this," she whispered. She could see it in his eyes, that enigma that ghosted through his resolve. It was straining for freedom. She could almost place her hand on him, underline the weight of her words with contact. Touch the good in him and _pull_ it free.

She felt the wrath in him before it burst upon her. " _DON'T_ play your games with me, Harper!"

His volcano sent her recoiling like a startled cat, hating herself for letting his harshness hit her like that, yet she just hadn't seen it coming. She still didn't understand this man. She couldn't reach into him. This couldn't be happening.

"Forget your sentiments for friendships and loyalties!" He blasted at her. "This goes beyond that. This is about what's best for mankind!"

She looked off and stood trying to reassemble her cool, trying to jut her chin, trying to set her features, trying to keep herself together. But she was trembling.

Maxson caught her reaction and how it had shattered her hope, and surprisingly, his manner softened in sudden pity. "Listen, I'm not blind to the fact that Danse was your mentor, and this isn't an easy burden to bear. But he's betrayed you, Harper. Betrayed both of us." It was his turn to step in to her, footfalls soft and mindful to approach skittish prey.

Ilya refused to look at him, fearing she would collapse into tears. She just held her body taut and tried to pin down her trembling.

"He let us get close, despite knowing what he was, and how dangerous his proximity was to us. You know how the Institute controls its agents. With a single command, he could have turned on us and killed without remorse. That right there proves that he never cared for either of us."

She sank in misery and allowed herself to be vulnerable, even as he moved closer still. Maxson had never willingly come so close in such a way. She knew what he was doing, trying to turn her against Danse... and he was getting to her. Had Danse really betrayed her? Her mind was numb to the prospect.

When she felt his gloved hand linger timidly on her arm, she still remained, uneasy at his intentions, unsure how to respond. Was he trying to comfort her? But when he seemed to gather confidence and his other arm rose up to guide her inward, she flinched him off and receded a step. That was when she could bare to look at him, and there was hurt in his pale, cruel eyes.

They had both tried to reach into each other through soft spots, but neither would cave. They were just too different. Or perhaps, too similar...

Maxson tamed his hurt at once, her refusal of his sympathy an obvious humiliation. "You know that a leader must make the hard choices. I know what you're capable of. I've seen it in you." Doom-Guy flashed through Ilya's mind. "But you're not alone in this hard choice. This is what we must do, as leaders, for our people, for their future. If we're to remain strong, we can't afford to make exceptions... Even when it means executing one of our own." A swallow, and maybe it was to quell any emotion pushing up his throat. He sounded defeated. "Find Proctor Quinlan. He's been analysing the data and should be able to provide you with a starting point."

That was it. The Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel had spoken. Ilya watched, still partially numb, as he rotated his back to her and gazed out at the Commonwealth. His Commonwealth.

A pillar of cold, dead steel.

She knew that if there was no swaying him in this, then there was no swaying him in his beliefs, and that the alliance was already doomed. Which meant that in time, she would cease to be of value to him. That realisation brought forth the present implications. She knew, without a doubt, that if she refused to carry out his order, she would be executed.

"You're right. Danse betrayed us... he needs to die."

She was about to turn, hollow, when Maxson spoke over his shoulder. "And Knight, there's a promotion for you riding on the results of these orders, so don't disappoint me... You're dismissed."

That added comment filled her hollow core with her fury once more. _Monster._

* * *

Anguish tore right through her. Ilya rode her power armour to its station in a daze. Only when she freed herself did she realise she was virtually alone in the maintenance bay. Had Maxson sent everyone he could spare out on search-and-destroy? Why her? Had he shifted this burden onto her to spite her for her defiance against him? Liberty Prime was nothing. This was his real test. The final test to determine whether or not she was worthy of ruling at his side in his empire. She cursed and found refuge against the power armour station frame, breathing, grimacing, processing.

Fury.

Her blood writhed through her veins like raw fire, goading her to snap, to ravage the bowels of the Prydwen in a great bloodletting. Her breath pitched as she released a spike of rage in a kick at the station. A scream begged for release, but she dampened it behind her teeth and strode for the tool racks, hands swiping everything off it to crash to the decking. It was loud, and would have been heard across the entire deck.

Huffing, Ilya sulked back to the power armour station and moulded herself against it, smothering her forehead into the steel, hard, craving to lash out more with her fists and taste the blood of her knuckles.

Fuck. Danse was really a synth. Had he really betrayed her? Had he been playing her this entire time? Shaun. It must have been her son's doing. He had sent Danse out to spy on her.

She unfurled herself from the station and leaned her back into it, sighing and seeking answers in the Prydwen's high ceiling above her. Only empty air stared back.

Danse. His eyes. All she could see were his eyes. Her deep well of memories flashed through her mind in torment.

The moment their eyes had first met, everything had changed for both of them. The first smiles they had shared with each other. All the adventures and wounds and moments within it all. The way his eyes had held hers right before she stood on that machine and vanished for the Institute. That night out in the cabin. Telling him of Shaun. The cave-in, their near-kiss. How he had carried her when she collapsed, waking to her hand in his. How he always just wanted to take care of her. The way he looked at her, smiled at her, touched her. The way he had kissed her. Last night...

She closed her eyes and surrendered a tear, letting it roll down her cheek unimpeded. Had none of it been real?

" _I'll always have your back, even in the worst of times. I promise."_

No. It was real. It was beyond her to think that everything they had gone through together had been a lie. No. Something deep within, something instinctual, primordial, hell, maybe even metaphysical, knew that Danse hadn't betrayed her. She knew him. Everything within him, everything they felt together, for each other, was real. _Real._

Ilya's heart began to canter within her ribcage as hope was renewed and her brain fired off possibilities. Maybe he was an agent for the Institute, infiltrating the Brotherhood, and had accidentally formed feelings for her along the way? So why had he kept her in the dark about being a synth? Had he been too afraid to tell her for fear of what she might think? But he knew she was accepting of synths. Was it out of embarrassment for his own bigotry? Why would he be so bigoted toward his own kind? Did he truly hate himself and his own kind?

It didn't matter what he was or why he did what he did, he was still Danse. It was her turn to have his back, even in the worst of times. Her turn to protect him from all that would hurt him. No one would touch him without fighting through her first. If Maxson wanted him dead, then it would be over her dead body.

She nodded to herself and gathered a breath, dashing away tears and trying to compose herself. Her eyes snagged on the sight of his power armour directly across from her station. He had abandoned it on the Edge of the Glowing Sea, the transponder smashed, though he must have ultimately decided it was safest just to leave it behind. He loved his armour...

How had he found out they were hunting him down? The Institute must have been listening to Brotherhood comms traffic and alerted him that he had been made.

Tentatively, Ilya approached the armour, as if it were Danse himself. _Why didn't you tell me?_ She lifted her hand, gradually reached out until she settled it upon his armour's chest. Where she had cleaned away the bloody handprint that tainted him with the remnant of her dark act. _What was going through your mind when you ran?_ The steel was cool against the skin of her palm. She wondered if his steel was still aflame... or if it was already dead.

"Where are you, Danse..."

* * *

 **A/N:** I was unprepared for how this part would get me down, and I'm having a hard time making myself write it as it just dampens my mood. I've come to love these characters as if they were real and it just hurts. Which is why this is so short. There might be some delays through this, sorry.


	43. Dead Steel

**Dead Steel**

* * *

He ran.

From the Brotherhood. From the truth. From himself.

 _Know your enemy. My enemy is me._

Synth. Machine. Abomination.

 _No. Impossible._

 _So why am I running?_

Numb. Nothing.

He ran.

Danse ran in no specific direction, he just ran. Every step he took echoed through the passage of his life, a cruel reminiscence of an illusive lie. Every step he took was an excrescence of life, an insult to everything he ever stood for, an insult to the Brotherhood. Every step he took was a curse _._

He ran.

Through the Glowing Sea, abandoning his power armour on the Edge. He mourned it, but he had to let it go. They would track him.

Through the irradiated swamp, the cold absent from his senses, the discomfort of his wet uniform not registering. Why did it matter that he was cold, tired, hungry and thirsty? None of it was real. He wasn't real.

Through the dead Wastelands, from the demons that scourged it, from the demons within himself. They weren't real.

He ran.

His body operated on pure instinct. Self-preservation. Keep on. For the first time in his life, he ran from his enemy. He always knew his enemy, knew the strengths and weaknesses, knew when to hold and when to fold. But this was no tactical retreat. He didn't know what it was.

He just ran.

Numb. That was all he felt, all he was. Just numb.

Nothing. That was all he felt, all he was. Just nothing.

Just a machine without a purpose.

* * *

Nightfall.

Danse ran. The road, the dirt, the grass, the rocks. None of it mattered, it was just his path, and in the way. The stars followed his exodus, chasing him as he tore up the land. His heart thrashed, bruising in his chest. His heart wasn't real. His breath wheezed, stinging in his lungs. Lungs weren't real. His limbs pushed, burning in his muscles. None of it real. But he powered on, crashing through rivers and clearing outcrops of rock with a furious speed.

Remnants of false memories endeavoured to seize him in his automaton state, but he tuned them out by pushing harder, faster. His path became laced with laser and blood, slaying the beasts in his way without mercy or feeling, numb, witness through eyes that were not his own. He stopped not for the spoils of war. A machine did not need spoils nor sustenance.

The land was a deadscape and Danse became it, an embodiment of the Wastes in phantom deathbringing, lost but for his instincts to survive.

To kill or be killed.

A shadow and snarl of teeth. It was on him like wrath itself, smashing in from his blind side and sending him crashing down under its weight. Danse tumbled down rocky mounds with the beast fast upon him, his combat armour soaking up most of his impacts. When he rolled to a halt against a tree, his senses righted themselves and he saw it.

Yao guai. Charging in. Fast. All teeth and claws to savage him alive.

 _Machine is not alive._

For an iota of a moment, Danse meant to remain, to let the beast tear him apart and end his sin of existence. The peace of that thought flowed over him, and he almost closed his eyes upon surrender. But long-honed instincts stole over.

Danse snapped on and brought his barrel to bear, unleashing his own wrath, all teeth and fire to savage the beast in return. The yao guai ate his lasers through its charge and stuttered on final approach, slamming Danse where the two tumbled further in a mesh of fur and armour. Teeth were on his forearm as he shielded his face, crunching into his armour plating. Hard soil and grit washed over his vision, gravity and ceaseless bodily impacts stalled his retaliation.

Then in one final thump, they reached the bottom of the hill in a tangle of limbs. The beast let out an incensed growl and clawed at him for leverage, pinning down his legs as he kicked out to ward off its snout, and it was set to clamp its jaw down on his thigh. But Danse was in possession of superior firepower. With laser rifle still clutched to his chest in a death grip, he pressed the barrel flush into the creature's jaw and watched it vaporise from the inside out, hot ash shrouding over him.

Breath. Silence. Ache.

 _Should have just let the beast kill the machine. Machine doesn't even know how to die like a man._

Caring not for the ashes, Danse let his rifle drop from his hands and slumped his head back into the gravel beneath him, gazing up at the stars as they gazed down on him. So crisp, so beautiful. Such majestic oblivion. Each prick of light coruscating out its brilliance in a web of unfathomable distance. Humanity could have been out there, exploring all it had to offer, discovering the wonders of the universe. But it was because of abominations like him that they were not.

 _Machine can't have admiration for the stars._

Knocked from his catatonic dimension, Danse frowned and pushed his aching bones upward. It was then that he realised where his abominable instincts had taken him.

* * *

 _Where are you, Danse..._

Proctor Quinlan hailed Ilya's edgy appearance with a condoling glance. "Oh, Knight... I was told you were coming," he started hesitantly, pushing up his spectacles. "Sorry about this business with Danse."

"I don't need apologies, I need to know where he is."

It seemed to get her point across. "Yes, you're quite right," he sighed dully. "I've been pouring over Danse's duty reports and unfortunately, I haven't found any concrete information. As you're well aware, Danse had intimate knowledge of the Commonwealth and I'm afraid he could be seeking refuge anywhere. I think our best approach would be to identify every location he's ever visited and eliminate them as possibilities one by one." Ilya crossed her arms impatiently. She didn't have time for his long-winded phrases and careful enunciations. She needed to get the intel she needed then get out there and find Danse, double-time. Now he was saying he had no clue where to find him? "You may want to get comfortable, this could take quite a bit of..."

"What the hell is this crap about Danse being a synth!?"

Ilya shot around to see Haylen brimming with rage, her usually dainty features screwed up into something foul.

Quinlan managed to contain his ire at her insubordination. "I assume your outburst was a reference to some doubt regarding Danse's identity. I can assure you that my findings are quite accurate, Scribe."

Haylen simply ignored Quinlan and shot a hot glare at Ilya. "So he sets Danse up, and then you knock him down! Is that it?"

Ilya's gut lurched. She felt wholly worthy of Haylen's anger, but she had to play the game of stone-cold hunter in order to both save her skin from execution, and to get to Danse before anyone else did. "I don't have time to discuss it right now, Haylen," she shot back impatiently.

"Why? In too much of a rush to pull the trigger?" Haylen sneered. "I can't believe that after everything Paladin Danse did for you, you're just gonna turn your back on him like this. There's obviously been a mistake, and we need to get to the bottom of it." _I know, Haylen. I know._

"Scribe Haylen!" Quinlan scolded. "You're addressing a senior officer and you will show her the respect that she's due or so help me I'll have you brought up on charges!" He took a breath through his nostrils to calm himself. "Now, unless you're here with information that can assist us, I suggest you return to the police station immediately."

At the reality check, Haylen swallowed her anger. "Of course. My apologies, Proctor. I believe I have some information that's relevant to the search."

"Very well then, would you care to enlighten us, or do we have to wait until you decide to grace us with your knowledge?"

An odd shift in manner took the scribe and she looked back to Ilya in something of refinement. "Knight, if you'd accompany me to the Flight Deck, I'd like to show you the information I've compiled first hand. I've stored the data on my vertibird gunship's computer."

Impressed by her show of self-control, Ilya mimicked her refinement and nodded. "I'll take anything that gets me closer to finding Danse."

"Yes, ma'am."

Quinlan seemed relieved at the outcome. "Proceed, Knight. I'll continue doing my research here."

"If you'll follow me, ma'am?" Haylen prompted, and Ilya nodded and fell into step behind the woman, quietly wondering why she had relented from her anger so easily. It was clear that Haylen was up to something, however, as she broke off from the path toward the rungs and made a right turn for the steps down to the lower deck.

"Haylen?"

"This way," was all she said.

She led Ilya down into the recreation area. Memories of last night flitted through her. The smiles. The laughter. His eyes.

 _"_ _To us. To a lasting friendship."_

"Do you actually plan on killing Paladin Danse?"

Haylen's question pulled Ilya back to the present. What the hell was the woman doing? Anyone could eavesdrop, and Maxson most likely had multiple eyes on her right now. She sent a scouting look around to check they were alone. "That's a risky question, Haylen..."

The scribe sighed in desperation. "I know it is, but I need you to listen to me for a minute. I've known Paladin Danse ever since I was an initiate. He trained me, showed me the ropes... and when I screwed up, he taught me to dust myself off and move on." Ilya fought to keep the empathy from her face as Haylen pleaded her case. "He's earned my admiration, my respect and my friendship. I don't care what Quinlan's report says. I don't care if he's a machine or not... he's still Danse."

 _I know, Haylen. I know._ But Ilya exercised the feral reputation she had earned herself amongst the Brotherhood. "Get to the point."

"I'm trying," Haylen floundered. "This is... difficult... Danse is the most selfless person I've ever met. I've watched him risk his own life based on nothing more than principle alone. That's why I'm asking you... not just as a member of the Brotherhood, but as a human being... give him a chance. Let him tell his side of the story." At the wall Ilya was playing, Haylen seemed to come to the conclusion that it was impenetrable. Her pale features somehow paled further and her voice grew slight. Ilya felt horrid. "If you're not convinced by what he says, or somehow he's become truly lost to us, then you do what you have to do."

"You'd have me disobey orders?"

"Can't you put the Brotherhood aside, even for a moment? Am I really asking that much? Just talk to him. Find out what's going on inside his head, then weigh your options. If you still think he intends to bring harm to the Brotherhood of Steel, you do what you have to do," she repeated in that tone of defeat. "But if you see a glimmer of mercy or humanity behind his eyes, I beg you... let him run."

 _I will, Haylen. I will._

At Ilya's blank silence, Haylen heaved a sigh. "Before the Prydwen showed up, Danse had me identify a fallback point if we ever lost the police station. It was Listening Post Bravo, an old pre-war U.S Military outpost on the northern frontier of the Commonwealth. It's isolated, and we're the only ones that knew about it, so there's a good chance that's where he's headed. Just be careful. There's no telling what state of mind he's in right now, or if he trusts any of us at all... I know you'll do the right thing."

 _I will, Haylen. I will._

* * *

Ilya couldn't get off the Prydwen fast enough. Camouflaging her riled anxiety with the air of a murderer set on ending a friend-turned-traitor was a mission in itself as she marched through the decks. The armoury was her first stop, Teagan lending her a sorrowful face as he shifted ammunition across his bench. She didn't meet his eyes. She didn't want his words.

She stuffed her ammo into her pack and headed up-deck for the lab, for Dogmeat. He knew Danse's scent and would help her in finding him. There was also no way in hell she was leaving him here with these coldblooded bigots for them to use against her as leverage if they found out she was going to let Danse run. Clay-Crawler... there was nothing she could do for him still, and she didn't have time to devise a prison break. Danse was her priority.

"How could you have been so close to Paladin Danse and not know he was a synth?"

Ilya shot a frayed glance to the soldier who had spoken as she rushed by. It was only a passing comment as he just shook his head at her and continued on, and Ilya did the same, boots hard on the deck in rigid step. Tears were denied their encore under a hard frown.

The lancer at the helm of her vertibird offered to fly her directly to her destination, but she denied, stating that she needed to make the walk alone to prepare herself. The lancer understood with silence through the airlift down to the airport.

Her feet carried her on the flight of panic the moment she hit the dirt outside the forward barricades. Vertibirds were prowling the skies and no doubt a great number of ground patrols were out hunting for Danse's blood. The reality of how swiftly they had turned on him had her conflicted. On the one hand, she understood their desperation to find and stop him from reporting his intel to the Institute, but on the other hand, she couldn't understand their lack of reasoning. To just hunt and kill him without even allowing him to explain himself? If he were human, they would bring him in for interrogation, glean all they could of his role as a sleeper agent for the Institute, and then execute him if found guilty. But because he was a synth, there was no mercy, just execution. After all his years of diligent work, whether it was by loyalty or not, they owed him that mercy.

It still baffled her to think that Danse had been so loyal, so dedicated, so selfless for the good of the Brotherhood, only for it all to have been a guise. Why would he have gone through with all of it, even aiding in preparing the Brotherhood against the Institute? Had he turned against his contract and decided to side with the Brotherhood instead? No, the Institute would have taken action against him if he defected.

God, she wished Deacon was here. He would have an angle on this, and throw in some snappy jokes to keep her on her toes. She really missed the pest. The Railroad could also have some insight on how Institute sleeper agents operated...

Snatching at her small travel pack, Ilya took out her Minutemen radio and called in on Preston's channel. "Preston? It's Ilya."

There was a stretch as her and Dogmeat jogged down the road leading out from the airport. The canine was slightly ahead of her as usual, lapping up his first outdoor excursion since revival and chasing every stray scent he could find, ever on alert for hostiles.

"Hey, Ilya. How's it going out there? I hope the Minutemen recruits aren't causing you any trouble."

She breezed over Preston's question. "Is Deacon there? I need to speak with him, urgently."

"...uh, sure. Yeah. He's not far." The young Minuteman sounded a little gutted to be brushed off like that, but Ilya didn't have any spare sympathy for anyone other than Danse right now. "I think he's been helping Sturges with Clay-Crawler's armour, I'll check if he's with him."

Not a moment later, Ilya was sighing in relief at the chirpy yet laid-back greeting Deacon hailed down the radio. "Yo, boss. What's up?"

"Jesus, it's good to hear your voice."

"Sorry, Jesus is off-duty right now. Can I take a message for him?"

Ilya wanted to laugh, but it was beyond her. "D, I need to ask you something, and it's important. Institute sleeper agents. Is it possible that they could have sent one out into the Capital Wasteland to infiltrate the Brotherhood? I mean, before they showed up in the Commonwealth."

There was a pause, supposedly in thought-gathering. "Sure. I mean, it's possible. Why not? The Institute likes to get their dirty paws onto all sorts. Infiltration and espionage is their preferred way to go about things, same as the Railroad. They would have known that the Brotherhood was a sleeping giant over in D.C." Ilya nodded at the confirmation, and her heart sank, but Deacon went on leisurely, sounding as though he was tinkering simultaneously. "Though I will say it would have been a rad-tad bit of an overstretch for them to send someone waaay out to the Capital while things were hot in the 'Wealth. It would have really been more productive for them to keep an eye on the Railroad's rescue ops rather than what the Brotherhood was up to. They know we run their runaway synths out there, and the journey can get a little hairy because you're out in the open for all eyes to see. Coursers and sleepers are active looking for escapees, but once we get them to the Capital and set them loose, the Institute knows it's a lost cause at that point."

Ilya had stopped listening throughout that, caught in her realisation. Was Danse a runaway? She stopped walking as her brain dashed rapidly. Fuck! Was she really that hungover and exhausted that her brain shat itself? How could she not have thought of that? Danse might not even be a traitor! Just because he ran, doesn't make him guilty. He could have been a runaway from the Institute, been found by the Railroad and had his memory wiped, and then escorted to the Capital Wasteland to start a new life as a human. Only to join the Brotherhood and end up back where he started... _Oh, Danse._... Had Maxson come to this conclusion, too? Had he considered that Danse might not have even known he was a synth? If so, did he even care, or was it just easier for him to assume Danse had betrayed him? Did he just want Danse dead on principle, regardless of the truth? Brotherhood and their principles...

If Danse had been blind to his identity, then this revelation would destroy him. No, the reality that his own people didn't give a shit that this was a possibility and were hellbent on killing him regardless... _that_ would truly destroy him.

"Ili?" Deacon uttered in her silence. "What's this all about anyways?"

Alarms were wailing in her skull. "No time to explain. Deacon, if I fuck up and end up dead, then... I'm sorry. Tell everyone I'm sorry." She cut the transmission and the pang with it, breaking out into a full-throttle sprint to tear up the road. She was prepared to face down a Brotherhood firing squad for Danse, no way in hell she was going to let them hurt him.

But weighing more on her nerves was the danger Danse posed to himself. What if he had run so that he could... end it?

The thought melted dread into her mind, which then morphed into an otherworldly terror. Ilya had learned that the traditionalists in the Brotherhood had an almost Samurai-like outlook on the concept of death and honour, that when faced with shame, it was honourable to take one's own life to absolve oneself of that shame and earn back that honour. Danse had proved this after Doc Crocker in Diamond City had taken his own life when she confronted him on his crimes.

 _"_ _He chose the honourable way out."_

Danse was... _had_ been a traditionalist, through and through, upholding the Brotherhood's ideals to a fault, living by that code day and night, ultimately compelling him to join the Outcasts. Now, he had nothing. The irony of being the very thing he hated most in the world, hunted by his brothers and sisters, condemned by Maxson. Maxson, whose life he had saved back in the Capital Wasteland, despite him being different, the _enemy._ Maxson, who had gone out of his own way to protect him from _her_. But in the end, it may not be her to destroy Danse, but Maxson himself...

Ilya nurtured a glimmer of hope that Danse hadn't betrayed them and never knew he was a synth, but guilt weaved itself into a knot in her chest for what it would mean for him. She knew Danse. She knew his heart of steel would win over all else. It always did. She knew what his heart would have him do.

No. Like _hell_ she was going to lose him now. He didn't have nothing. He had her. If the world wanted him dead, then she would fight the whole fucking world for him.

Ilya punished her body and pushed her speed to its limit. "I'm coming, Danse," she breathed into the air. "Just hold on."

* * *

What was the point?

Danse draped his desolate body up against the cold bunker wall, breathing in the cold bunker air, existing in the cold vacuity of his mind.

What was the point in running? What was the point in setting up these defences? What was the point in him?

Nothing.

 _Machine has no point, no purpose._

He had moved through his gloom in the productivity of denial, enabling him to claim the bunker as his den away from the world with powered defences. His combat armour he had rid himself of, discarding the pieces in a corner of the concrete confines that would be his tomb. His forearm, seeping blood where the yao guai's teeth had prevailed, he had left to fester with infection. His rifle, he had retired against a wall. Then, he retired himself against the wall.

Now, the details of his surroundings were drowned out by his gloom. His brothers and sisters hunted him and he had fled his righteous fate like a machine without morality. By running, they would surely come to the conclusion that he was a traitor. His self-preservation was not only an insult to the Brotherhood, but mankind.

His eyes fell down to his hands, disgusted. _I touched her with these disgusting hands._ He had violated her. Defiled her. A machine lusting for a woman... the very thought dishonoured her. With a surge of anger that threatened to consume his gloom, he scrunched them into fists until the blood was squeezed from them, knuckles stark beneath forged flesh. Then the anger was sapped from him as quickly as it surged, and he slumped his head back against the wall, gloom conquering him. He was devoid of anything more to summon.

Memories eclipsed him. The decrepit streets, grubby little hands snatching at scrap where it lay in opportunity, grubby little hands thieving precious belongings where they lay in neglect, grubby little hands killing where they had to, in defence or murder, in sole survival.

 _Grubby little lies._

Had he ever been that orphan child?

Stumbling across the desolated ruins to Rivet City. Cutler. The Brotherhood. The Outcasts. Arthur. The Commonwealth. Ilya.

At what point did it cease being a lie? Was he the original? Set loose upon the Commonwealth at the demise of the real Danse, to unwittingly infiltrate the Brotherhood? Arthur clearly thought that. To spy on Ilya? She would think that. Was he an escapee aided by the Railroad and set loose upon the Capital Wasteland, only to join the Brotherhood and end up back in the Commonwealth in some cruel twist of fate? No one at the Railroad headquarters had recognised him.

What did any of this even matter? He didn't matter. He shouldn't even exist.

His thoughts were false, programmed, just coding sliding through a monotony of routine and sequence. None of him was real. Even thinking that he wasn't real and the resulting hollow it left in his soul wasn't real. That battle-fatigue they tried convincing him he had? Not real. He was just a lost soul wandering through the ruins of his life... No, he didn't have a soul.

He was a _thing_ without a soul.

The thumping in his temples was enough to make him want to vomit. A machine that vomits. Laughable. What was wrong with those Institute fools? Why had they done this to him? Given him these biological emulations? These _feelings._ He thought he had known pain, from losing Cutler and enduring the guilt, to his hardships with Ilya, but this transcended pain. There was no defining the suffering of simply existing, enduring the prison of himself. Yet he couldn't even take credit for enduring himself, because his pain wasn't even real.

Those Institute heathens. No ethics, no morals. He was a game to them, a subject to experiment with and test the extent of his limits. More than a subject. A weapon.

His disgusting hands drifted down to the weapon at his belt, a laser pistol. He lifted it before his eyes, the burden of his own existence making even the movement an unbearable effort. This weapon was capable of taking life in an instant, designed to extend the will of a single soldier. Without it, his combat effectiveness was exponentially decreased, and without him, so was this weapon. _Without my weapon I am nothing._

But he himself was a weapon of far greater potential. He represented the fall of the world. He defied everything his life—was it even his life?—had fought for. He was his own bane.

The weapon edged closer to his temple, hazing out of his vision as an empty void took over, eyes staring ahead, unseeing. He never thought it would end like this. It should have been a glorious end in battle. But a machine deserved no such glory. He would not continue to be a burden on his brothers and sisters out there searching for him. He was doing the world a favour. Humanity. The Brotherhood of Steel. Arthur. Her.

 _Ilya._

Danse's hand faltered and the pistol quivered. Her face wisped through the oppressive fog. Her sapphires branded his memory. He grimaced and buried the pistol's barrel into the throbbing of his temple, swallowing a knot in his throat. What was she thinking right now? She must despise him, think him a filthy traitor... or would she be in pain, mourning him? Would she be in _danger?_ The pistol lowered. What if Arthur had thought her an accessory? What if he had her executed?

The thought shook him to his core. He had been so drowned by his own disgrace that he hadn't given a single thought to Ilya's safety. She could be dead right now for all he knew. And there was nothing he could do about it. A suicide mission to save her would only further implicate her.

Arthur would make the right decision. He always did. He would see the truth in her eyes. He always did. Together, they would overcome this betrayal and liberate the Commonwealth with their forces. They wouldn't need his mediation anymore. They would support each other through this. They may clash, but he believed in them both. With Arthur's will and Ilya's fire, there was no pair better suited to protect humanity, a great force to be reckoned with. He was proud of them both.

They no longer needed him.

The laser pistol was summoned once more. This time, his hand did not quiver, and his eyes were all-seeing. The fog diminished into clarity, and he lost sight of her face, of her eyes. No more pain. No more guilt. No more nightmares. No more demons. No more Paladin Danse.

It was freeing, to transcend that threshold and let go of everything. To let go of himself. If he had a soul, if would have already ascended from him. An eerie peace settled over him and he breathed it in deeply. This was how it must be. There was no glory in it, but there was honour. It was his duty to be an example. Even in death.

"Ad victoriam," he breathed out his final words in martyrdom, but they still sounded like a mockery coming from his lips.

Unable to endure any longer, Danse closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.


	44. Meet Me on the Battlefield

**Meet Me on the Battlefield**

* * *

 _Hold on, Danse._

It was nightfall by the time Ilya reached the bunker, harried and breathless, black uniform now flecked with dust and blood of the Wasteland's demons that had dared to hinder her. But she herself was a demon that could not be hindered.

She forced her pace into a low stalk before breaching the grass, eyes sharp through the night, ears pricked, aim steadied against her rapid breath—combat training imbedded deeply. A fast scan. Empty vertibird pad, bunker entrance, door ajar, mounted defence turrets, laser ash on the path... _Danse._

With a snappy hand signal, she instructed Dogmeat to heel. A series of precise 10mm rounds had the turrets out of commission within seconds, debris combusting and sparking out. She waited a few beats for sounds of retaliation, then broke the grassline and flitted straight for the ash pile.

She scuffed into a kneel like a rabid raider and sifted her fingers through the ash. Blood. Dogmeat sniffed it and barked in recognition. Her breath spiked. This better not _be_ Danse.

No. Ilya pushed that from her mind and hustled for the bunker, barely exercising combat procedure as she passed through and swept the interior. Busted protectron with laser scoring, drawers and cabinets rummaged, terminal on standby. He had been through here. These were his echoes.

Nurturing her hope, Ilya called for the elevator and was descending into the bunker's depths with a ragged heartbeat, forcing herself not to call out for him in risk of alerting more of his defences.

Only the low thrum of the elevator and her pounding heart permeated the silence. But then...

A laser shot.

 _No... No,no,no,no,no!_

"DANSE!" Ilya splayed her hands against the elevator doors, exhaling a gust of hysteria. _No, please not like this. Please not like this._ "Danse!" Her fingertips attempted prying between the doors, as if it would hasten the speed of her descent. "Fuck!" Her fists bashed at the doors in failure. "Fuck! DANSE!"

She bulldozed out the moment the doors yielded. "Danse!" A warning bark from Dogmeat saved her from the opening laser of a protectron, the red streak missing her head by inches as she threw herself down into a roll. Reining her focus, Ilya sighted down her optics and returned fire with a crescendo of bullets, shredding the robot to scrap before it could even follow up with another shot. Dogmeat's trio of barked warnings alerted her to three more hostiles, and Ilya had them tagged and scrapped double-time.

"Danse!"

With Dogmeat silent, Ilya was confident the area was cleared, and rushed ahead through the robotic debris like a madwoman, her heart in her throat and threatening to vomit forth. _Please, Danse. Please don't give up. Please don't leave me. I can't lose you now. Please don't do this. Please, please, please_. She barely drank in the surroundings, all her focus pooled toward that fenced window directly ahead of her.

Danse. Alive. _Alive._ Slouched down against the wall. Uniform ripped open at the chest. Bloodied. Laser pistol in hand, eyes fixated on it. A scorch mark on the wall beside his head.

He was alive... but dead. Had he even heard her?

Ilya's hysteria subsided in place of dark foreboding. She had never seen him like this, his utter being withered and gaunt. If he had looked haggard this morning with a hangover, it was nothing in comparison to the ghost of a man before her eyes now. "Danse...?" she uttered softly, fingers clinging to the netting over the window space.

It took an eternity to reach into him, and she waited, at his pace, patient in fear of what he might do. When at last his head lifted enough for his eyes to settle on her, she breathed a shallow breath. His eyes were a graveyard.

They stared into each other for a time that was lost on them, though nothing was shared between them in its usual effect. It was as if his spirit was absent.

Ilya mustered the courage to break her eyes from him, rushing through the collapsed wall of the bunker where a cave burrowed an entrance into the adjoining section where Danse was slumped.

When she stepped through the broken wall, he was on his feet, registering her appearance with dismal acceptance, brown eyes bleak in the shade of desolation. The laser pistol was still in his hand. "I'm not surprised Maxson sent you, he never liked to do the dirty work himself." His voice was forlorn, though there was a barb in his latter words. Maxson's spiteful order to send her disappointed him, it seemed. That miniscule morsel of his disappointment gave Ilya hope, however. There was still life in him.

She held his brown eyes. "Give me the gun, Danse."

Her words skipped off his surface. "I couldn't do it, Ilya..." _Ilya._ "I should have. Wanted to." His eyes, voice, hollow. _He_ was hollow. "But couldn't... because of you."

A muscle in her heart cramped for him, tendrils of her yearning solace reaching for him. But she had to be cautious with him. "Why didn't you tell me, Danse?"

A wilted sigh. "Because, I didn't know..."

At those words, Ilya released her hostage breath and closed her eyes to savour it. He hadn't betrayed them. When she opened her eyes again, he was staring right through her. His face... a wasteland barren of hope. "Please give me the gun..."

But again, it didn't reach into him. "I had so many chances to let it end, yet I defied them. Something wouldn't let me do it. Something kept pushing me on. It wasn't until now that I realised it was you..." Instead of fixing his brown gaze on her to display his depth of meaning and soak up her melting reaction, he gazed down at the pistol in his hand, eyes void. It was as if he didn't believe his own emotions. As if he didn't deserve her responding emotions. "I couldn't just do it without somehow letting you know that I never betrayed you. You _and_ Arthur." _Arthur._ "Until Quinlan got that list decoded, I thought synths were the enemy. I never expected to hear that I was one of them. If it wasn't for Haylen, we wouldn't even be having this conversation." She must have contacted him through the pulsar signal... Suddenly, a trace of his steel arose from his ashes and his brow hardened. "So, what are your orders? Does Arthur even want me alive?"

Unable to wound him with the words, she softened the truth by eluding them and letting her eyes alone speak them, her aching empathy stealing over her caution. "Danse, I'm so sorry." As she stepped closer and reached a hand to the wound at his free arm, weeping with blood, he tensed and withdrew from her advance, steel snuffed out under a brow riddled with anguish once more. He spoke at length, detached and haunted.

"It just feels like a cruel joke. I remember being a child, I remember growing up in the ruins... everything. I-I... suppose they programmed that all into my head." The way his voice had snagged on that realisation, the way his features were woven with despair, the way that glimpse of disgust with himself had broken through it, Ilya was straining with herself not to reach out and cradle him in her arms. His pith was exposed and no longer cared to mend it. "I mean, I feel like I've been in control of my entire life, making my own decisions and determining my own fate. Even though the proof states I'm a synth, I don't feel any different than I did before. I still feel like... a human." His introversion faded, and he lifted her his hopeless eyes. "Why does any of this even matter to you? You're obviously here to carry out Arthur's orders."

Ilya stirred with shock. "No. Fuck Maxson. Fuck the Brotherhood. I'm getting you out of here."

"Don't be ridiculous," he gave a bitter scoff. "Look, I'm not blind to the fact that we're good friends—" _Good friends_ "—and this must be very difficult for you. I wish Arthur had sent someone else."

Ilya attempted to break in, to tell him he was more than just a good friend, that this was more than just difficult, that his precious baby-Maxi was a prissy little fuck waving his dick around because he got his feelings hurt, but Danse trailed over her in his conviction.

"But that doesn't change a thing. I'm a synth, which means I need to be destroyed." The resolute clarity in his eyes horrified Ilya. He was still in possession of his stalwart authority, still taking command of the situation, still Paladin Danse. "If you disobey your orders, you're not only betraying Maxson, you're betraying the Brotherhood of Steel, and everything it stands for. Synths can't be trusted. Machines were never meant to make their own decisions, they need to be controlled. Technology that's run amok is what brought the entire world to its knees and humanity to the brink of extinction. I need to be the example, not the exception." His self-damnation finished on a hollow note, not a shred of hope remaining for himself, yet he had enough life in him still to loan her his empathic furrows that always killed her. He pitied _her_. So empathic, yet keeping no sympathy for himself.

He wasn't human. He was _better_ than human.

Ilya gazed up at him in wrenching sorrow. Even now, he still stayed true to his Brotherhood roots. "If you really feel that way, why did you run in the first place?"

"The moment I learned the truth, I knew my life was in danger." A transient betrayal in his brow as he glimpsed those emotions again in the ground at his feet, before fading into his impossible condemnation. "I'm a soldier, so self-preservation kicked in... I needed to regroup and assess the situation. Once I got here, and I had some time to think... I realised I'd just made everything worse... I should have stayed on the Prydwen and accepted the inevitable. Like I said, I need to be the example, not the exception."

Ilya shook her head, furrowing her forehead and pleading with her eyes. "The empathy that you're showing me... it's a _human_ emotion."

Another flash of pity, accompanied by a gentle smile. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I've made my decision. I'm ready to accept the consequences of my true identity." _No._ "Maxson's ordered you to execute me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand in your way."

"Danse, no..." She cradled her elbows as his resignation seared right through her. How could one shine a light in the darkness of ingrained beliefs where a man was so committed he was prepared to become a martyr for them. "Is there any way out of this?" Her voice wavered with plummeting hope.

"We both know that this is the right thing to do," he droned to deny her. "If you refuse to follow Maxson's orders, you're undermining everything the Brotherhood stands for. For that, Maxson would have you executed. I can't allow that to happen on my account." He was still putting her first, never thinking for himself, always just wanting to take care of her.

If he wasn't going to fight, then Ilya would fight for him, setting her features into a hard sculpture. "No. I won't do it, Danse."

His slack brows peaked in disbelief. "I can't believe you'd risk your life just to keep me alive. Why would you do that for me?"

His shocked display shocked Ilya in return, that he was so twisted against himself that he thought her capable of ending him for the Brotherhood, disregarding their bond and everything they had endured together. Her mind flashed back to the heist escape, his adamant attempt to be a martyr for his morals. It was just the way he was, the way the Brotherhood had taught him to be. After her actions that day, after all this time, he still didn't know what he meant to her.

With a bewildered shake of her head, she pinned him with pained, purposeful eyes. "Danse, you know why I'd risk my life for you. I don't care who or what you are, you're still the same man I knew from day one. Strong, loyal, selfless." With great care, she advanced on him again with a subtle step. He tensed and his fingers wound themselves tighter around his pistol, but he stood his ground. "Honourable, dedicated, hard and indestructible, but empathic...and sensitive... If I knew you were a synth, I still would have shot that vertibird down in the heist escape to save you, to choose you over those soldiers." The cramping around his eyes spoke of his pain in memoriam, but she pushed on. She had to. "And I would do it again, as many times as I had to, to keep you safe. When you told me you'd always have my back, I should have said it back to you. Because I always will, no matter what. I'll fight the Brotherhood if I have to. I'll fight the whole damned world. I would _die_ for you, Danse... I've already lost my family. I don't want to lose my friend."

He took aboard her words for deep rumination, she could tell by the way his eyes darted between hers and that small divot formed between his eyebrows. She knew all his lines and creases, all his scars and imperfections, and she loved them all, wishing she could know the stories behind each one. She always loved watching him think and how these features played across his face, how they moved in pace with his soul, but her heart harassed her as she waited for his return.

The divot in his brow contorted into a grimace of frustration. "Don't you get it, Ilya? I'm not your friend. I never was. I'm a machine. My litany of morals and emotions, none of it was ever real. My feelings toward you... they're not real, just a fabrication to make me seem more lifelike. Predetermined programming." His fists gathered, the pistol trembling under the pressure of his grip. "You have real friends. People who truly care for you. You don't need me."

"No. No, that's not true. You're not a mach—"

"Spare me," he severed her words with a halting gesture, "please, Ilya." She wavered on the spot, a sickness hitting her gut that wended through her innards like ice. Danse regarded her in pity once more. "This is the best thing for the both of us. The sooner you come to terms with what I am, the easier it will be for you."

"Danse, no! Don't _you_ get it? I don't care that you're a synth!"

"But I do." With that, he backed away from her in solemn steps, eyes apologising, but calm, dead. His retreat from her was so symbolic that it reduced her to tremors. There was nothing left of him. She was losing him.

Ilya watched, wild, helpless, as Danse slumped down to his knees, so carelessly that it jarred his muscled weight. He mournfully placed the pistol before him, and then secured his hands behind his head in wilful surrender.

" _No..._ "

"Please," he begged her. _Begged._ "I ask this one last kindness of you." He kept his gaze to the ground, expression steeled but breaking. "End it."

"No!" Ilya breathed out hoarsely against sudden hot tears, rushing forward to grab at the pistol and toss it away, but he caught her wrist and tugged her toward him. The force with which he did so frightened her. The wild look in his eyes frightened her even more.

"Danse, please—"

"Ilya," he soothed, voice a deep drum that was too calm, too gentle, too _defeated._ "I need you to accept that this is what I want." His grip on her wrist lessened but he didn't release her. "I know this is a lot to ask of you, and I'm truly sorry, you of all people should never have been sent here. But please, give me this mercy." His forehead puckered at her in his anguish. She couldn't begin to fathom his pain.

The hot tears seeped from her waterline freely. "No. I won't. I can't." She shook her head through the veil of those tears. "Danse, please don't just give up. You're not a machine, you're a good man whose done great things and has so much still to offer the world. Please. I need you. I can't do this without you. Please don't do this. Please get up. _Please_ , Danse."

"Please don't make this harder than it already is," his voice was a gentle rasp to quieten her hysteria. "I hate having to ask this of you, but I need you to be strong for me, Ilya. I beg of you."

She tried to pull her wrist from his grasp, still shaking her head in a teary continuum. "No. Let me go. I'm not going to kill you, Danse."

"Look at me." When she refused and continued to tug on his grip, he repeated more sternly, "Look at me, Ilya." She did, wilting in his hold. His brown eyes, once warm and liquid, were cold and hollow in their tormented depth, reaching into her with such desperation she nearly sobbed aloud. "Please."

Lost in his depth, she was numb to his hands guiding the pistol barrel to the centre of his forehead. The moment it made contact with his skin, delirious adrenaline shot through Ilya's body like a volt of lightning, and she snapped. "NO!" She tore at the pistol as she screamed at him, straining to rip it from his superior grip. "STOP IT, DANSE! LET GO!"

"I need you to do this!"

"I CAN'T!"

"Please!"

"NO!"

Together they warred over the pistol, shouting at each other as they strained, voices overriding each other in a clamour of intense emotion that coalesced into a single pitch of insanity. Danse was easily holding Ilya in place by her wrist, yet her unyielding thrashes were causing him to teeter on his knees. Her wrist was beginning to throb with her effort against him.

"Stop it! You're not yourself!" Ilya shrieked as she fought to keep the barrel aimed away from him. The fear of him just fingering the trigger himself was raw and kept her in a frenzy.

"I'm myself for the first time in my entire life!" Danse bellowed back at her, the full force of his powerful voice and the mania that drove it blistering at her heart. She had only ever seen his rage rear its head to this extreme in battle against super mutants, and even then, it was controlled. Right now, he was manic beyond recognition, face a rictus of turmoil. "And I can't live with myself, knowing what I am! I'm a danger to you! To everyone! An abomination!"

"You're not! I can help you! Just let me! Just stop it, Danse!"

"You can help me by having mercy! Like I had mercy for Cutler!"

Everything slotted into place for both of them. In eerie equilibrium, they both ceased their struggles and let their grips fall slack despite still being welded together.

Danse was absorbed in his epiphany, staring into the past. "Like I had mercy for Cutler..." he repeated in a husk of a voice, haunted by his own words. "I _am_ Cutler."

Ilya felt cold dread clutch her once more. "No, Danse. You're not like Cutler. This doesn't need to be like Cutler."

"I knew he wouldn't want to continue living with what he was," he went on, oblivious to her. "Just as I can't live with what I am. I gave him mercy. I ended his suffering." His haunted eyes drifted up to lock with hers. So devoid of life. He had deserted all of his mantle in this revelation. "Just as I'm asking the same mercy of you."

"Please, no," she perished, hope deflating all around her.

To her horror, his strength gathered potency from the depths of his damnation, and her revived struggles were in vain. The barrel edged for his forehead again and Ilya cried out in powerless denial.

"Do it."

"No! NO!"

"Please, Ilya!"

"Danse! Oh god! No! Please!"

"DO IT! END IT! KILL ME!"

Without warning, something within her burst to flame and induced her finger to pull the trigger.

A crack of red light blazed between them. Danse gave a stunned cry as the laser seared into the flesh of his shoulder. He released Ilya as the hot slap of pain shoved him back on his heels, giving her the chance to eject the fusion cell and throw the pistol as far from him as she could across the bunker, screaming at it like a mortal foe in the process.

She rushed down to him, the stench of his scorched flesh not even touching her senses as she caught him in the midst of his harrowing defeat, her hands supporting the bowing of his jaw. He was barely registering the pain of his wound now, he was just a slumped and dazed phantom on his knees before the face of defeat, arms slack at his sides, panting, eyes clouded.

Ilya gathering up his face and caught his eyes, searching for him. "Danse, you're okay, I've got you. You hear me? I'm here. I've got you." Her thumb stroked his cheek, fingers stroked his brow, eyes holding him with her, voice calling him back to her. "You're okay. You're okay. I've got you. I've got you."

When at last, pain entered his eyes and his features fell in lines of emotional agony, he spoke to her in his thrumming husk of a voice. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, Ilya. I-I—"

"Shhh," she soothed him, breathing a wisp of air in relief, "It's okay. You don't need to say anything." She pulled his forehead to hers and shared a breath with him, their eyes glimpsing depths in enlarged pupils before they closed them upon the comfort and pressure of each other. He panted raggedly against her and his body began to tremble in shock, and Ilya felt the creases in his forehead rumple against hers. "It's okay, Danse. I've got you. I'm not letting go." She chanted those words to him over and over in a tender whisper. Her fingers smoothed through his grimy hair behind his ears and down along his jaw in a lulling rhythm, not caring for the sweat, dirt and ash on him.

She had him. She _had_ him.

He unleashed a heavy, strained breath against her, and subtly, muscle by muscle, she could feel his tension bleeding away. "I-I don't know what came over me. I had no right to force this upon you."

"Forget about me." Her hands clutched at either side of his head and held his trembles at bay, opening her eyes to lance into his at point blank. He was staring right back at her under that empathic brow. "I'm here for you. I've got your back. We're going to get through this together. You and me." Her fingers increased their pressure on his skull to emphasis her words. "You hear me?"

Eyes that harboured an abyssal of torture searched hers and his brow quivered against her forehead. He said nothing.

"You want to know why you're not a machine? Because you've evolved. Machines don't evolve, not on their own, not the way you have. When I was in the Institute, you know what I found? Life. Not synthetic life, but self-evolving organisms. The synths in there have evolved beyond what the scientists created. Emotions, _dreams_ , Danse. That's life." Her fingers continued their caressing trail down the symmetry of his face, and his eyes watched her in rapt concentration as he listened. "They're evolving and the Institute is oblivious or turning a blind eye to it in denial. They created life, Danse. _You_ are _alive._ "

The seed of despair that had woven into his marrow lingered, for it would take time for him to process that, but he frowned deeper and blinked repetitively in the genesis of it. Ilya sighed into him, basking in the reality of his safety, in the feeling of holding him, and she lifted her lips to settle them into the furrows knotting up his forehead. She longed to kiss his lips and cradle him with her fierce affection, but feared it would overwhelm him in the aftermath of such trauma. Tears of empathy slipped from her eyes in rivulets.

Tentatively, his quavering hands rose from his sides and reached toward her, gradually slipping to her waist with a feather touch. Ilya pressed her forehead back to his and brushed his roughened cheek again, letting him know it was okay. His hands eased around her with more confidence, pulling her in closer until her knees knocked together and she was nestled between the interior of his thighs in their mirrored kneel.

They remained like that for a lost time, holding each other, breathing in each other, bathing in the gravity they gave to each other. Whatever had happened between them last night, it didn't matter. None of it mattered. The only thing that _did_ matter was the here and now, and that they were together in this traumatic unfolding of events.

"I don't deserve you," Danse's voice rumbled quietly to her after a great length of time.

Ilya swallowed back a fresh roll of tears and withdrew her forehead from his, gazing into him deeply. "You deserve so much more than me," she countered him in hushed tones. "Danse, you're the most _outstanding_ man I've ever met." Her nostalgic humour birthed a fragment of light in his eyes, and she couldn't keep from pressing her palm to his exposed chest to accentuate her next words. "You're more important to me than anything else in this world..." She felt the pulse of his heart flutter beneath her palm, his brown eyes warm and liquid again as he stared into her.

...Because...

 _I love you._

It hit her in full force. She loved him. If this moment didn't make that clear to her, then nothing ever would. She still loved Nate, she would always love him... _Can I bring him back?_ She buried those thoughts. This was too heavy right now, for both of them. Danse needed her undivided care and focus, not a flood of confessions and weight.

Danse exhaled a gust, and Ilya felt some of his tremors diminish. "You're... very special to me, also," he expressed with timid strain, unaccustomed to divulging his feelings. "To think what I just put you through... How could I have been so blind? I should consider how my death could affect the people that care about me. People like you and Haylen."

Ilya lent him a gentle smile, her hand still on his chest, savouring the warmth and intimacy. A worm of worry curled in her stomach that he was only giving in for her sake, and not his own. But at least it was something. At least he was alive. Fuck. How close she had come to losing him... Her eyes then fell to the laser burn on his shoulder. "I'm sorry for that," she extended pathetically.

"I'm sorry for forcing you to do it."

"Hey, it's okay." Fishing for a Stimpak from her utility pouch, she eased it into his arm just beneath the burn. "We'll need to get this properly treated. Your uniform has melted into your skin. And this bite could get infected. How did this happen?" she asked as she pricked another Stimpak near the wound on his other arm.

"Yao guai. I'll tend to them later," he dismissed, keen to have her settle back down close to him, though he was hesitant to touch her again. "Right now, I need to consider my next move."

Ilya nodded. They shouldn't be lingering here while the Brotherhood was still out there searching for him. "Whatever you decide to do, I've got your back."

The grateful smile he gave her was tinged with that pity yet again. "Thank you, my friend." _My friend._ "But I have my own path to follow. The only clear choice is for me to leave the Commonwealth. The sooner I make for the border, the sooner I put this behind me." He roused from his knees to stand, and Ilya rose with him, ready to support him if he faltered. She hadn't even considered that he would leave the Commonwealth, even when she was planning on letting him run. It had just been a step too far ahead of her current dilemma. He was right in that it was the obvious choice, he couldn't stay here in hiding, but another worry festered in her.

What if he meant to leave, only to end it himself and spare her the pain?

"Take my holotags." Danse knocked her from her thoughts as he tugged the chain free from his neck, offering them out to her. "Use them to prove that your mission was a success, or Maxson will just send someone else to hunt me down."

Ilya reached out numbly and plucked them up in her fingers, holding her palm aloft as she just stared at them.

"Now, come on. Let's get the hell out of here." Before she knew it, Danse had turned and was striding for the broken wall. Just like that.

She stood a moment and followed him only with her eyes. He was still a phantom. The fire no longer burned in his steel, and she wondered if it ever would again.

Fingers crushing his holotags with a possessive surge, Ilya followed him, vowing that she would do whatever it took to bring that fire back to life, and keep it burning.

* * *

 **A/N:** Chapter was named after the song by SVRCINA. I fell in love with it the moment I heard it and it seemed really fitting for this.


	45. Standoff

**Standoff**

* * *

Danse drifted through the bunker like a phantom. The implosion of his sanity was raw, yet distant, as if he had only been a witness. It was like he had lost a piece of himself back there, a piece he never knew he had possessed. His brain was in bedlam, unravelled, exposed, and scrambling like a vile worm.

His _evolved_ brain, Ilya had told him. A machine that was organically self-evolving was dangerous beyond measure.

 _"_ _You are alive."_

Her words both haunted and healed him. All outside stimuli was still numb but for his awareness of the guardian angel at his back as she followed his walk of shame for the elevator. After that meltdown, he was very, _very_ conscious of her, as if his brain had imprinted on her in its last hope for survival. His last _reason_ for survival. She was his only hope and reason. His only purpose.

But he had to leave the Commonwealth. Leave her. Then what?

Danse was adept at compartmentalising in stressful situations, operating with efficiency in combat and duty, but this wasn't combat or duty, this was personal introspection... something he was inept at.

He had some time before he would reach the border, and he was without a doubt that Ilya would escort him or die trying. There was time to decide his fate once she was gone. For now, it was imperative that he remain strong for her sake.

Entering the elevator, he turned and waited for Ilya. Sapphire eyes caught his, and Danse instantly knew that it would be a great effort to wear a mask of strength after the sharp gauge she just invaded him with. Just like with Arthur, there was little hope of escaping her psychoanalytic perception. The two were truly destined to be great leaders together...

She didn't utter a word or press anything during their ascent, for which Danse was grateful for. He did notice that she was standing nearer to him than usual, her shoulder subtly brushing against the soiled fabric over his arm, as if she felt that being in physical contact with him would keep him placated against pulling a gun and pressing it to his temple again. It was almost possessive paranoia, but he couldn't blame her after the atrocity he had just committed down there.

The elevator dinged and Dogmeat trotted out with a loud bark—wait, Dogmeat? Danse had only just noticed the canine. That was sloppy. His situational awareness was really slacking. Traversing for the border of the Commonwealth was going to be a suicide pilgrimage if he didn't shake off this absent mindedness. But when Ilya stepped out ahead of him, pistol drawn in a tense stance honed by years of experience, step calculated and silent, he knew that even if he was a mess, he was in good hands with her watching his back.

Then he finally heard what had the two on edge. Vertibird engines. His heart sank into his stomach and then shrivelled like a mass of dried leaves. They had found him.

Ilya flicked a panicked look at him over her shoulder, though her eyes were laced with a hardened mettle to keep the panic anchored; she was prepared to die for him, right here, right now. Danse wasn't prepared to let that happen.

As she moved up to breach the threshold as his vanguard, he held her back with an arm over her chest, proceeding before her into the hollow night. He had been ill prepared for who awaited him.

Elder Maxson strode forth, shaded by the dark, alone and vulnerable, but armoured by the praeludium of his iconic wrath at the sight of the synth before him. No snap of surprise was visible in his teeming features, just cold, repulsed hatred. His stride came to a jarring halt in the staredown, fists coiled to ground the palpable rage riding his being. Danse met his blue stare and held it firm.

He had come here alone, without an honour guard or even a single sentinel? The young man was a veteran soldier and experienced survivalist, older and wiser than his biological years due to an intense upbringing and strenuous demands, and endowed with the sagacity of his bloodline, but to risk himself like this, just to see to it that Ilya followed his order, was very odd. Was Arthur's hatred for him so intense that he trusted no other with his demise? Or was there something else that had compelled him to leave his charge as elder and come here without a single witness?

Was he here in hopes of being swayed? Was Arthur straining against Elder Maxson?

When Ilya stepped out from behind Danse, the snap and lock of Maxson's glare was like a whip, lashing at her across the divide and ensnaring her. "How dare you betray the Brotherhood!"

Ilya pulled in a ragged gasp of shock and was set to fling herself forward, presumably in an attempt to get between the two men and guard Danse with herself, but Danse was attuned to the subtle nuances of her body and foresaw it, casting his arm out to catch her advance. Her impact was soft but wrought with desperation, and she clung to his arm as he held her at bay.

"It's not her fault, it's mine."

"I'll deal with you in a moment," Maxson snarled, eyes flaring with disgust, as he stabbed his finger to Danse in condemnation before his eyes shot back to Ilya. "Knight, why has this... this _thing_ not been destroyed?"

"How did you find us?" Ilya evaded the question, her voice ripe with distress. Danse felt her begin to tremble against his arm. Rage or fear?

Maxson regarded her with such a primeval gaze that a blaze of protectiveness hit Danse square in the chest. "When I sent you to execute this machine, I suspected you'd have difficulty following my orders. Now that I've arrived, it appears that my instincts were correct." Danse noticed that he had evaded Ilya's question in turn. "What did it say to you that made you betray the Brotherhood? _Why_ is it still alive?"

"He's not a _thing_ ," Ilya hit back, her fingers gaining grip into his bicep in that possessive protectiveness, "he's one of your best men. Your friend. Your _brother_. He didn't even know he was a synth, and he didn't betray us. This is all just as much a shock to him as it is to us, but he's still a man no matter his origin, and he's still your brother."

Maxson was flawless against her sentiment. "Have you taken leave of your senses!?" Again, he stabbed that weapon of a finger at Danse, who felt something within him flinch at how damning the gesture was. "Danse isn't a man, it's a machine... an automaton created by the Institute." His gesticulation upon his words was wrought with furious passion, a trademark of the elder's, and Danse felt his heart continue to flinch with each motion, that that furious passion was directed at him. "It wasn't born from the womb of a loving mother, it was grown within the cold confines of a laboratory. Flesh is flesh. Machine is machine." Maxson separated the two ideals in each hand, before gathering them into fists. "The two were never meant to intertwine. By attempting to play God, the Institute has taken the sanctity of human life and corrupted it beyond measure."

Despite himself and his personal stance in this debate, Danse couldn't shun Maxson's words. He was right. He always was. As a synth, he may or may not be alive... _You are alive..._ but it didn't change the fact that he was a corruption of life and a symbol of the fall of man. Yet, the fierce grip of the woman on his arm evoked a steadfast survival instinct in him, and the flinching of his heart at Arthur's cold damnation summoned a vapour of anger from within. Danse armoured himself against his brother. "After all I've done for the Brotherhood... _all_ the blood I've spilled in our name, how can you say that about me?"

At the direct address from the synth, Maxson's expression mutated further into the epitome of hatred. "You're the physical embodiment of what we hate most. Technology. That's gone. Too. Far." Cold eyes were smouldering, and gestures were thrown outbound as he spoke on loftily in his tirade. "Look around you, Danse. Look at the scorched earth, and the bones that litter the Wasteland. Millions... perhaps even _billions_ , died because science outpaced man's restraint. They called it a 'new frontier' and 'pushing the envelope,'" gestures were now flung slackly in hopeless disgust, though the magma boiled still, veins swelling at his temples, " _completely_ disregarding the repercussions... _CAN'T_ you see the same thing is happening again!? You're a single bomb in an arsenal of thousands preparing to lay waste to what's left of mankind!"

The purity of Maxson's scorn hit Danse hard, deep, desiccating him to his core. To look upon the young brother who had fought at his side, both in battle and debate, with the war of words and weapons, the brother who he had supported and been supported in kind, the brother who would have once died for him... to look upon him now, deep ravines of rage lacerating his features, all for him, Danse had no words to challenge him with.

But his guardian angel had his back, pushing against his restraint with the fury that flared in her. "You're full of shit! You're obsessed with protecting humanity, but you don't even know what it is to be human! And you call _him_ a machine? He's not a machine, he's flesh and blood and bone, just as much as the bones in the Wastes! You yourself have cybernetics, so don't you even think about playing the purity card!"

That revealing dig struck a chord in Maxson's ire, the lethality of his glare sharpened even more.

Ilya feasted on it. "Yes, I snooped out Quinlan's files, so shoot me." There was a scant moment of silence as the two sliced each other with armed eyes, and Danse feared a return of their childish power-play banter, but Ilya slipped grim steel into her voice and bore the weight of the dispute again. "Danse is loyal to a fault and we've both fought each other over that loyalty, so don't try denying it. He's not an enemy or a threat to us or our goals. He dedicated his life to protecting mankind, just as we have."

"Is that what it told you?" Maxson sneered to counter her. "How can you trust the word of a machine that thinks it's alive?" He numbered off his next words by his fingers. "A machine that's had its mind erased, its thoughts programmed, it's very soul manufactured! Those ethics that it's striving to champion aren't even its own. They were artificially inserted in an attempt to have it blend into society."

Like dust through his fingers, Ilya slithered free from Danse's restraint and flitted out from his other side, inserting herself before him with an arsenal of fire in her eyes. "No, you're wrong. He _is_ alive. His thoughts and emotions are his own. His ethics and soul have evolved from his experiences throughout his life." She gave Maxson a slow, scrutinous look-over from his boots to head, and Danse could only imagine the acidic look she was employing. "You just can't see that because you have your head so far up your ass and you're a fu—"

Danse eased his hand to her shoulder, dousing her flame before it could ignite a personal clash between the two storms at war. He realised that even now, he was still trying to mediate them. But that wasn't his place now. Instead of easing Ilya back, he took a step toward Maxson to meet her, giving the stewing elder a solemn eye. "It's true. I was built within the confines of a laboratory, and some of my memories aren't my own." He ignored Ilya's sharp glance, instead focusing on the whirlpool of conviction in his core that she had kindled. _You are alive._ "But when I saw my brothers dying at my feet, I felt sorrow. When I defeated an enemy of the Brotherhood, I felt pride." His focus withdrew from his whirlpool and reached out to Maxson again. To Arthur. Reached out to his brother. "And when I heard your speech about saving the Commonwealth... I felt _hope_." Maxson maintained his glacial countenance, and Danse felt a vein of frustration to aptly express himself. "Don't you understand? I thought I was human, Arthur."

At the personal utterance, a ghost of pain shadowed his brother's eyes. _His were the eyes of a tormented soul,_ Danse remembered his first thoughts upon seeing those eyes. Arthur had lost so much throughout the trials of his life, so many people and loved ones, men and women under his command... had he lost his own soul in those trials of steel? Was he now and forever numb to loss? Was he just a wraith lost to his eternal war for humanity? That thought made Danse feel hollow, that he had failed to be his shield from such torment, that he had not served his youth with the steeled experience of years gathered in duty, at least what he had perceived as years in duty. Or was Arthur still straining against Elder Maxson? Was his Arthur still in there?

Danse knew that he wasn't only fighting for himself right now, but for Arthur's soul. He took another step to bridge the distance, very aware of Ilya's tensing, and that in their struggles to shield one another, both were advancing on Maxson at the risk of provoking his notorious wrath. "From the moment I was taken in by the Brotherhood, I've done absolutely nothing to betray your trust, and I never will."

Even as those words spilled forth from his lips, Danse knew they had been a mistake.

Maxson pounced on the opening. "Delusions," he hinted at bitter mirth, an alien thing on him. "Or is the machine malfunctioning? You must truly think me unworthy of being elder if you believed I was blind to the trail of deception you left in your wake at every turn, always leading back to Harper." She received a malicious scowl. "You were lucky I took her at her word when she told me she wasn't privy to your identity—I had even considered having her assassinated before even letting her step foot back aboard the Prydwen."

That caused the muscles in Danse's chest to tightened, and he took a micro step closer to Ilya at his side, fearing she was in danger of a prelusive laser.

"The two of you have formed quite the affinity," Maxson drove on, his baleful glare trading between the two of them as they stood helpless in their exposure. "So much so that I suspected it had grown intimate." When neither of them denied it, deeming it futile against the elder's legendary astuteness, he absorbed their silence and his eyes fluxed with something akin to hurt, a bruising behind his pupils before he harnessed it into his pit of wrath. "I see..."

Danse edged closer still to Ilya, and she appeared to have waned slightly from her staunch defence. That flux in Maxson had taken Danse by surprise. Had that been jealously? He had always suspected that Ilya and Maxson had some nature of a connection outside of their working relationship, but he had figured it had just been a mutual understanding of one another and the shared burden of leadership. Not once had he considered it to be anything remotely romantic or sexual. They despised each other.

With a firm, sincere gaze, Danse strove to guide this debate away from their personal conflict, but it had already taken that route and he knew it would be difficult. "Yes, I'll admit that my loyalty became torn, but believe me when I say that I never would have allowed it to get to the point of deliberate betrayal. I would _never_ do anything to endanger the Brotherhood, or either one of you, and I always did everything within my power to keep things from turning into a conflict between the three of us."

"He always put the Brotherhood first, even before me," Ilya vouched. Danse stole a glance at her profile. Not only was defiance on her brow, but an unspoken, personal plea to invoke something in Maxson. Even if she was in touch with a deeper side to the young elder, Danse felt certain it was already too late to attempt appealing to his better nature. "When it really came down to it, his loyalty was always to you. I could never compete with that." Her words bothered Danse, and then he asked himself if that were true... he really didn't know...

Apparently Maxson did. The coiling of his being was the gentle precursor to the eclipsing of his wrath. "Enough lies!" His bark was serrated, but Ilya did not give an inch, her body taut and poised for battle. "I do not want the loyalty of a machine, lurking at my back, scheming for my death. No doubt the two of you were plotting against me, whispering between your bedsheets, intent on some coup to overthrow me and take the Brotherhood of Steel under your hands." Livid eyes fixed Ilya in her place. "That you would entangle yourself with this machine, giving your body to it," his upper lip curled, "even just allowing it to _touch_ you, repulses me."

 _Repulses you, or makes you envious?_ Danse thought to himself.

Ilya radiated her fury like an angel on fire, and Danse sensed the reckoning on the horizon, gravitating his way toward her. But she was swift in her fury.

"You fuck... How _dare_ you talk about him like that!" What reared as a gritted snarl swelled into a full-bodied shriek as she marched in on Maxson. What she had been planning on doing—throwing a punch or a well-placed kick?—it ceased to matter when Maxson snapped out his laser pistol.

She came up short with a grating inhale and flailed a hand back to feel out Danse, for the pistol wasn't aimed at her. Still, Danse had already lunged out and tucked an arm around her waist, twisting her around behind him.

"No! NO!" She protested and grappled against him, but her efforts were inferior. Danse held her back and stood his ground, locking eyes with the pistol as it stared him down. It seemed he was destined to die this way.

Ilya continued to squirm. "Maxson, no! Don't you dare pull that trigger! Please! He's your brother!"

"It's too late for that now," Maxson rebuffed, voice coarse and aim steady. "The Institute has foolishly chosen to grant you life. You simply should not exist. I don't intend to debate this any longer."

 _"_ _NO!"_

So be it. An unearthly veil of serenity rinsed through Danse, just like it had when the pistol had stared him down by his own hand. With his free hand, he reached around to take Ilya's writhing shoulder in his grasp. "It's alright. We did our best," he told her softly, and her struggles came to a sinking ebb. A whimper escaped her lips. Danse knew that if Maxson allowed him to live, he would challenge not only the high elders, but the litany at its core, and destabilize the entire Brotherhood of Steel. Whether Arthur was still in there or not, it didn't matter. Elder Maxson was doing his duty, what was best for the Brotherhood, and therefore, mankind. His grasp on her shoulder grew into a tender squeeze, and her head tilted into it, as if to touch his hand with her cheek. "You convinced me that I was wrong to be ashamed of my true identity, and I thank you for it. Know that I'm going to my grave with no anger, and no regrets." He tried with everything in him to believe those words, more for her than for himself.

"Touching," Maxson spat. "Now move, Harper."

Her proximity to the laser discharge would earn her a nasty splash burn, so Danse was forced to release her and just hope she would diminish with acceptance. It was unfair, he knew. She had fought so hard for him, and they had been so close, so _damned_ close, to escaping it all together. Down in that dungeon that had nearly become his tomb, he had been so adamant that his death wouldn't truly affect her once she came to terms with what he really was, that with her courage to pull the trigger herself, she would accept the reality of it all. But she had shown him that he was wrong. She had shown him that there was a piece of himself in her heart. And now she would lose a piece of herself... There was so much more he wanted to say to her, but the words would just catch in his throat, and make all of this even more difficult for her. No, best to get it over with, quick and clean.

Upon her release, Ilya slumped on her feet and just wavered there for a moment, eyes finding refuge in the ground, absent. Finally, her feet began to carry her away from him... but then she veered without warning and flung herself between them once more, ignoring both men as they growled at her. Her index finger took the lead as she stalked at Maxson yet again. "No. You listen to me, you little shit! I've fought, killed, and bled for the Brotherhood, and you know that without me, you'd be fucked going up against both the Institute and the Dark Bloods. As your partner in war, you owe me your respect. I'm gonna give _you_ a long-ass speech for once, and you _will_ listen to me, damn you!"

Shockingly, Maxson acquiesced. His pistol lowered as she confronted his firing lane. "Very well. I'm listening," his voice scythed. Danse dared not move nor breathe.

"This isn't black and white, no matter what philosophies you colour it with in your fancy fuckery of words. He is not your enemy, he is your ally, and you told me yourself that he's the best officer you have in his dedication. Even now, he's standing here willing to give himself up to you, because for reasons beyond me, he's still loyal as fuck to you. He had given up when I found him. He even tried getting me to kill him because he couldn't stand living knowing what he was and how it would affect the Brotherhood. He _wanted_ to die!" Maxson's pale gaze flicked up from her and to Danse for a split second, his jaw working beneath his beard. "That's how fucking loyal he is to you! Now I know you're a cold, twisted fuck bound by your protocol and regs bullshit, but I also know there's a man underneath all that, and a _man_ knows when to do the right thing. But if I'm wrong and you really are just a machine inside, and if you kill Danse, then you're gonna have to kill me, too. Because I _will_ try to kill you. So only one of us will be walking away from this alive."

Her fiery hisses drifted in the night winds as the two elements collided in a staredown. Every joint and muscle in Danse's body was braced to somehow clear the distance and rip the two apart if they erupted. He could see it now—Maxson cutting his losses and just shooting her down, before turning the gun on him. Every breath that echoed was excruciating.

"Unbelievable," Maxson muttered. "You would really sacrifice yourself for this machine?"

Danse couldn't see what passed between their eyes, but Ilya gave only a nod.

"You're a stubborn woman."

That was the understatement of the century, Danse thought.

Maxson took a moment of respite just to pulse the muscles of his jaw to grind up whatever emotions seethed within, then he spoke. "So, it appears we've arrived at an impasse. Allowing Danse to live undermines everything the Brotherhood stands for, yet you insist that he remains alive... which leaves me with only a single alternative... Danse," he addressed, the name like acid on his tongue, "as far as I'm concerned, you're dead. You were pursued, and slain, by this Brotherhood Knight, and your remains were incinerated. From this day forward, you are forbidden to set foot on the Prydwen, or speak to _anyone_ from the Brotherhood of Steel. Should you choose to ignore me, know, you'll be fired upon immediately." His mouth fell into a grim line and his words crept out through his teeth. "Do we. Understand. Each other?"

Danse was airy yet weighted, caught in disbelief, but utterly awash with gratitude and pride. Arthur _was_ in there. "I do. Thank you for believing in me, Arthur."

"Don't mistake my mercy for acceptance," Arthur deflected in a low, husky growl. "The only reason you're still alive... is because of _her_."

 _Her._ She. His enigma of a woman, his fury and fire in flesh and blood, his guardian angel in steel. Danse would never forget.

There was a moment where the two elements just lingered in the aftermath of their storm, staring into each other, less hostility and more toleration, as if they were divining a pact between them. What existed in that stare, it was illusive to Danse as he just watched from afar. No longer the mediator... They were now on their own with each other, and he feared what that would mean for them and the alliance.

Arthur broke the eerie exchange. "I'm returning to the Prydwen, Knight. Take some time, say your goodbyes, and then I expect to see you there. We still have war before us."

The elder's departure into the night was wrought with a desolate silence. Danse and Ilya watched as the vertibird glided skybound and soared into the stars. Dogmeat shattered the silence with a farewell bark. Danse wondered if he would ever see his brother again...

Even with every trace of Maxson gone, they both remained in their places for an elongated time, the night gathering and whispering.

Then she turned to him. She walked to him. She stared into him. Eyes and heart and soul.

They both collapsed into an embrace before they knew it.

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry for the delay, these past few chapters have been hard to write and the last one especially took a lot out of me. I sort of just ran out of motivation for a while. Despite the mood of them, I hope they were at least somewhat of a good read.

\- I wanted to stick with the game dialogue for this chapter, but I knew I would have to stray a bit because of the personal connection I've added with these three. I'm sorry to hear that this bothered some of you in the previous chapter. I take on board everyone's opinions and I'll keep trying to find a happy medium between reader feedback and my own instincts.

\- For those of you who have grown to like Maxson, I'm sorry he was cast in such a bad light here. I still love the little shit, but he really just had to be a big little shit here. But you love him for it, right?... right?

\- Since this fic has gotten to a ridiculous length, my author instincts made me decide to break this up into parts, just to give more of a sense of progress and achievement and to keep everyone from feeling swallowed by a mountain of chapters. This chapter will mark the end of Part I.

Part II blurb: With war looming, Ilya and Danse battle their demons together, exploring the depths of their bond in their fight to support each other.

But the alliance is threatened in the aftermath of Danse's exile. Ilya and Maxson continue to clash, and without Danse to mediate them, their power-play grows more intense as their forces go to war.

The Blood Lands. They find themselves bound to a world even harsher than the Commonwealth, surrounded by the savage and bloodthirsty in the rivalry of clans, but the unearthing of long lost secrets could shift the balance of power for them all.


	46. PART II Blood War

**PART II**

* * *

With war looming, Ilya and Danse battle their demons together, exploring the depths of their bond in their fight to support each other.

But the alliance is threatened in the aftermath of Danse's exile. Ilya and Maxson continue to clash, and without Danse to mediate them, their power-play grows more intense as their forces go to war.

The Blood Lands. They find themselves bound to a world even harsher than the Commonwealth, surrounded by the savage and bloodthirsty in the rivalry of clans, but the unearthing of long lost secrets could shift the balance of power for them all.

* * *

 **Blood War**

* * *

The cave walls were a bloody mosaic, painted with arcs of fresh crimson or stale in deep maroon, layers of violence encrusting the earth's skin. The air was thick with the heat and reek of bodies, both living and dead, and carried the ever-echoing hubbub of raiders living underground, too compact for comfort.

The initiate stumbled his way through the tunnel, bare and blistered feet catching on stray rocks and stabbed by sharp little bastards of stones. He had been walking through the desert for days, and his every limb and muscle were deeply imbedded with the harrowed pleas for rest.

The tunnel would eventually branch into the main cavern, what the raiders here liked to call 'The Big Cave.' Not the most original or inspiring name, but they were a bunch of dumbass savages, after all. The line of slaves ahead of him was blocking a clear view down the tunnel, but through the chinks of their movement he could pick out the details of a mass congregation. The loud ruckus of many raiders definitely gave proof to it.

The small group of slaves were ushered out into the expansive cavern by their guards, shoved through the heaving heat of the crowds, and hustled into an alcove meant only for them. Urine and faeces spilled across the ground at their feet while the guards snapped steel collars around their necks, chaining them to the rock wall like dogs.

After enduring a bout of 'sportive' slaps around the face and head by one of the more eccentric of his guards, who then told him he was due to suck him off tonight—oh, great—the initiate took in the surrounds with a fusion of awe and fear. Illuminated by fiery torches and lanterns, the cavern was alive like never before. Piling up into two spiralling levels, the upper ledge was brimming with malevolent waves of bared and painted psychopaths, gathered in groups on makeshift or stolen furniture.

Was the entire clan here? It couldn't be, they couldn't afford to amass everyone while the Red Claws were actively raiding the outer encampments and prodding for weak points in perimeters, and the initiate felt almost certain that the entire clan wouldn't even fit in here. There had to be at least hundreds of them here, though.

Slay and Dark-Drinker must be announcing something big.

Like war.

Hours passed while the swarm thrashed together, waiting on the arrival of all inbound patrols, slave escort parties, or runners who would absorb the spiel of the battle commanders and then run the message back to the other movers and shakers at the smaller outposts. The stifling atmosphere began to grow unbearable, and the fetid stench was thick enough to punch through the smell of human waste in the slave alcoves. It was of the Dark Bloods—pungent sweat and the musk of sex, decayed breath, and the hot tang of oil and blood.

Raiders were impatient, especially the caveman variant, and soon, fist fights broke out over stolen seats, drinks, or from someone accidentally stepping on a foot or groping a claimed sex-slave. Anyone who didn't bother throwing themselves into the brawls hardly took notice, however. It was just usual backdrop.

Just when the initiate was about to begin plucking the hair from his balding scalp out of chronic anxiety and to rid himself of lice, a voice that both boomed and scratched the eardrums sliced the clamour of the caves.

"Blood Children!" All were in the thrall of the reedy figure that overlooked them from the highest point in the cavern, shrouded by a thick hood and cloak. The initiate knew who he was. War-Cry. The spokesperson for the battle commanders. The inciter of war. The voice of battle. "Still your bones and heat your blood... for your battle commanders!"

An explosion of avid cries and crashing metal as War-Cry departed for the appearance of Slay and Dark-Drinker. The brother and sister duo revelled in it all in greedy egotism, tall and domineering in their presence and barbaric power armour.

The throaty and overruling voice of Slay rewarded them their devotion. "Who's hungry for fresh MEAT!?"

The mass of savages erupted further into bestial roars and the clashing of cups on metal armour pieces. Slay stood atop the jutting knoll overlooking the cavern, crafted from twisted metal spires and secured to the rock ceiling on chains like a swinging chandelier. It could be pushed off the ledge and lowered from a pulley system. Behind her on the top ledge were two thrones crafted by the same gnarled metal, adorned by the skulls of many of hers and Dark-Drinker's greatest foes. Dark-Drinker himself went to perch leisurely in his throne, often the more mute of the two.

As the clamour died down, Slay spoke again, propping a power-armoured boot up on a piece of metal. "There's some meat out there that needs skinning, boys and bitches. Meat that think they're big enough to be top dogs of the Commonwealth. The Brotherhood." She paused to allow the growling rumble below to run its course. "Not only are they crawling around our lands, making themselves at home in our caves and bleeding us of our free air, but they're jerking off with those Minutemen cubs, and challenged us with war. And it's a challenge accepted..."

The crowd swelled with rabid excitement, bodies thrust up from seats, spittle flying in animalistic cheers, fists pumped and muscle flexed, feet stomping and hands clapping thighs. Slay's maniacal grin could be seen from where the initiate huddled against the rock, her teeth flaring bright against the black paint smothering her muzzle and her bronze skin. Her head swept the mass of mayhem with slow, greedy calculation, her silver mohawk seeming to fan out and come alive as her head swivelled.

"SHUT UP!" She suddenly blasted out, voice a scrape through the air, face a carved malice. Every single raider in the cavern fell silent and still. "They got Doom-Guy." The silence grew even heavier in her grim tone. "They don't take prisoners, they think they're too good for it, so you can bet he's dead. You animal fucks better be ready for this shitstorm, because the Brotherhood are no cubs like the Reds or the Minutemen. We can't count on our slaves stopping them from nuking us out, so we spread ourselves wide, lessen our casualties if they drop the bombs, which means pushing back the Reds even more. It also means we gotta hit the Brotherhood hard, and fast! Right in their hearts!" She pounded her metal fist to her chestplate, the resonance loud and crisp.

In unison, every raider mimicked her, whether their chests boasted metal or not. The result was a thunder of power through the cavern to volt the initiate's bones.

Anger poured off Slay as she stood proud and vicious. "When they make a move in the Blood Lands, we strike them where it hurts most. I want their leaders, the famous _Elder_ Maxson, and his little right-hand bitch Ilya Harper, who fancies herself a general of those Minutepups."

The initiate swallowed a hard gulp and almost choked on dense saliva. No. Not Elder Maxson. He didn't give two shits who this Ilya Harper was, and was beyond ecstatic that Third-Degree wouldn't be torturing him for her name anymore, but they were not getting their dirty hands on Maxson! There was no way they would even be able to get near him, anyway! Not with Paladin Danse around to kick their asses! That man could make his power armour _dance!_ And Maxson was a combat legend himself. Stupid savages!

"We will make an example of them. Use them as leverage. Torture them for their secrets, and for our pleasure," the vile woman slipped in with perverse relish, making the initiate's skin crawl at just what she considered pleasure. That poor Clay-Crawler creature... the sickly little guy was probably dead out there somewhere by now, though. But death was a better alternative to being that woman's plaything.

"We'll make them cry and squeal like little girls, force them through the Screaming Craters, pit them against our best warrior slaves, have lots of fun with them, then we'll bleed them out to the Dark Blood, slowly and painfully, for their people to see and watch. Then they'll know not to FUCK WITH US!" Her revving return ignited a clamorous uproar. One of the slaves nearby was covering his ears and rocking in place.

"Dark Bloods!" War-Cry took his encore, arms outstretched, bellowing through their racket while Slay stood overseeing in triumphant silence. "We are the blood children of this land! Us! Not the Red Claws! Not the Minutemen! Not the Brotherhood!" Raving raiders chanted and howled. "We sweat and bleed for this land! We die for it! And we will rule it all because _we_ are the top dogs, and we have earned that right in blood and fire! We will rip and tear any that get in our way, and then feed them to the Dark Blood, where they'll rot in the Dark Deep for eternity! Not even the Red Menace and her firestorms will stop us from ruling this land!"

Slay gave a display of accord, her upthrust metal fist preluding a ferocious scream for glory, and was met tenfold by the cave in her reign.

The initiate watched in horror as Dark-Drinker lifted his power armoured weight up from his throne for metal gods and strode for Slay on her vantage point, taking with him a clay bowl. His face was daubed in orange and streaked with some type of tribalistic design in black, hair dreadlocked back in long black tatters. He looked every bit the demon he was known as.

He clutched the back of Slay's skull in his metal paw and directed her head his way with a brutish tug. They shared demonic grins before Dark-Drinker dipped his entire hand into the bowl and then plastered the sludge of oil and blood straight to Slay's face, leaving a handprint to stain.

The Blood Bond. A declaration of the ultimate respect and the bonding of spirits.

Slay hissed aloud like a ravenous creature and bared her teeth in satisfaction, licking the syrupy mix from her lips before returning the bond for Dark-Drinker. He howled like a deranged beast, then the two devoured the remaining contents of the bowl and spat it out across the crowds to shower them in the glory. The cave erupted to a climax, and the initiate gawked before swallowing a burp of irradiated bile. They were sick in the head. All of them were sick in the head.

As the uprising surged in might and volume, it all began to pound and grate on his skull, and no matter how many hairs he pulled from his scalp it just wouldn't abate. He wouldn't need to keep plucking for long anyway, the radiation was doing all the plucking for him as his hair fell out in clumps. He would probably be a Ghoul soon... or dead.

He'd rather be dead than turn feral or be run through that vault death-trap. If he began to turn, he'd take that fate into his own hands.

The initiate covered his ears, and began to rock in place with the other slaves.

* * *

Blood...

 _Drip, drop, drip._

Warm, oozing from fresh wounds, trickling, pooling. It would slide through his lips, saturate his tongue, and stroke its way down his throat with that intimate arousal he so missed.

 _Drip, drop, drip._

Luscious...

Clay-Crawler was hungry.

He lay on his cot in his prison cell, legs propped up against the wall, tongue splayed out and ready, daydreaming of blood trickling down from the ceiling to catch on his tastebuds in big, fat drops.

 _Drip, drop, drip._

He hadn't tasted blood in weeks. It was his serum, his liquid sanity. Too long without a taste and he was antsy. Bloodlusting. Dangerous.

One of his guards had shot him a weirded-out look the other day after he had sniffed at his hand on his arm to take him out for a walk. It was just a sniff. The guard guided him in his walk with his gun after that. He didn't smell very tasty anyway...

Not like Doom-Guy's eyeball... mmmh, eyeballs...

But something big had happened yesterday that had kept Clay-Crawler distracted. Outside the dreary confines of his cell, he had heard a lot of commotion. Yelling men and women, the stamping of boots on hard ground and the stomping of those big metal armour suits—thinking of, he really missed his big metal armour. He also missed Whisper and D-Con... even Dancer and Hang-Cock—The rumbles of the vertibirds followed the stomping, so many that it sounded like the thunder of the Red Menace. Then came the loud resonance of a deep, robotic voice. Like one of those ambling protectrons he had tried striking up a conversation with once. It was a boring conversation.

When he asked his guard what was happening, he was ignored. He often pressed his ear flat against his wall to listen to the yelling man train Whisper's warriors, the one that had taken over from Dancer—he loved listening to Dancer yell at someone that wasn't him for a change—but today, the new yelling man sounded less... yelly, less boss-like. The warriors sounded unenthusiastic in return. Even the Boss-Man had an air of gloom shadowing him when he came to visit this morning.

It was an odd visit. His luxurious boss-coat seemed less crisp, his wondrous boss-beard less fluffed, his hair less slick and eyes less sharp. He had stepped right up to the bars of the cell, looked at him with features drawn, and simply asked how he was feeling.

Clay-Crawler had said he was feeling hungry.

It was the truth, and usually, Boss-Man would feed his obnoxious hunger for flesh with a vile look, but this morning his eyes were devoid of the usual.

Clay-Crawler wondered what was wrong.

And Whisper usually visited every day. She hadn't come yesterday... or today, so far.

Oh no, curse in the Dark Deep...

Did Boss-Man eat Whisper!?

Just as that horrid thought occurred, there was a heavy toil and clang as the hatch to the makeshift prison block was opened. Clay-Crawler felt his thoughts had conjured punishment and twisted himself on his cot, pulling his legs down from the wall. Somehow this twisting had him ending up on the floor in a pile of flailing limbs, but he managed to untwist himself and stand before the visitor saw.

It was the healer, the grayed man with the kind eyes that Whisper called Cade.

"Hello there, Clay-Crawler," the grayed healer spoke, his manner matching his eyes. "Today's your lucky day. Elder Maxson has ordered that you be set free. I'm just here to give you a final examination and extract some blood, then you're free to go."

The young raider gawked. Then blinked. "Can go home?"

"That's right. Home. Wherever you deem that is."

His immediate thoughts pirouetted around fresh blood and the exhilaration of the hunt to claim it, but then his animal side gave way to his soft side. "Whisper take me home to Blood Lands? To Red Claws?"

Cade's manner slipped from kind to condolence. "Ah. I'm sorry, Clay. She's... busy right now. She had a tough job to do, and now she's taking an intermission."

Clay-Crawler cocked his head.

"A break," Cade edited. "She's taking a break. We're not sure when we'll be seeing her again."

"Boss-Man not eat her?"

It was Cade's turn to cock his head in confusion. "...No... we don't practice cannibalism in the Brotherhood, Clay-Crawler..."

"Why?"

The healer crinkled up his brow, now getting irritated. "Look, let's just get you out of this cell so I can look you over and take a blood sample, then you can be on your way. That sound good?" He indicated the guard to key open the cell door.

It did sound good. But not without Whisper. She was his home now. His keeper. His ruler. She was to return to the Blood Lands and his people, taking them under her rule to defeat the Dark Bloods. He couldn't return home without fulfilling the prophecy that Meek had told him he was to play a role in.

 _You will wake to sad eyes, angry eyes. Eyes that will rule this land._

Clay-Crawler shuffled out from his cell and allowed Cade to 'examine' him with his torture devices. "Dancer help me find Whisper?"

The torture tool under Cade's hand jerked suddenly while deep in his ear canal. It was an odd form of torture. Very mild. More of a tickle than pain.

"Pala—Danse is no longer with us, I'm sorry. He's... I'm afraid you won't be seeing him again."

The hitches and strain in his vocals meant he was either lying, or struggling with emotion. Clay-Crawler had spent enough of his life around a charismatic and critical female leader and her torture sessions to have picked up on the necessary perception of body language and various tells.

"Boss-Man eat Dancer?"

Cade's irritation quickly turned to offense. "No, Boss-M— _Elder Maxson_ has eaten no one. And you will speak no more of that sort. The last thing he needs is a rumour flying around the Commonwealth that he's a cannibal and eats his soldiers as punishment. Now come here and let me take your blood sample."

He was set loose out by the front barricades, his guard giving him a, "Good riddance," see-off. A lone puppy cast off from his brood yet excited to explore the world, he turned and looked back at all the soldiers and metal armours staring at him. They were mean to him, but they had fed him and looked after him, and he felt fatter for it. He had never been so fat, and one day wished to be as fat and pretty as The Dancer. In his eyes, all these soldiers were potential Blood Bond mates. He kept searching the swath of severe faces and helmets for Boss-Man's hairy scowl, but couldn't find it.

He would miss Boss-Man. He always liked his coat and beard, but now he liked the man that wore the coat and beard, and really, _really_ hoped that he hadn't eaten Whisper and Dancer.

Giving them the thumbs-up signal that D-Con had taught him, Clay-Crawler spun and set off at a sprint to hunt fresh meat, and then find The Whisper and The Dancer.

* * *

 **A/N:** I'm excited to finally be able to introduce the Blood Lands and delve into this aspect of the story. A special thank you to those that are still here and supported me this long :)


	47. Phantom

**Phantom**

* * *

 _I love you._

Three little words. Every time Ilya looked into those dead brown eyes, those words whispered out from the back of her skull, echoing through the atoms that forged her soul in its place, capturing every shred of her emotion to well up without release when the whisper drifted unspoken on her lips.

Danse was a phantom. A phantom clad in steel skin. He was in a land where she could not reach him. She could reach out, search for rifts in his mask, but only ever find that steel barricading her, damming up his void. He was lost, adrift, a reverie of his former steel.

Ilya didn't know what to do.

Those three little words could reach him in his lost land, dissolve that steel mask and cradle him through his void... or they could force him deeper into his void and bolster the steel to keep her out.

Chances were he didn't even feel the same way about her. A bond of affinity infused with a mutual attraction was one thing, but love was an unparalleled connection. Danse still loved the Brotherhood of Steel. Even as an outcast. It seemed he was an Outcast once again...

And she still loved Nate...

Ilya sighed into the breeze as it played with her hair, dark wisps of it caressing her face. The sun was cresting over the hill outside the bunker, waning with the coming of night. Warm hues splashed through the clouds, reminding her of how warm hues would once splash through Danse's eyes. She had tried luring him out to the surface for some fresh air, but he had just mumbled something inaudible and buried himself back into whatever task of tedium he had devised for himself for the day. Today it was sleep.

His holotags entwined in her fingers, the chain falling to glimpse the wavers of long grass in the wind and join them in their sway. She had thought of offering them back to him, but feared how it might affect him, remembering his words to her.

 _"_ _I might physically be a synth, but my heart and mind belong to the Brotherhood."_

Ilya didn't know what to think of that. Was his loyalty a cure or a curse? Was he thinking with clarity or in denial? Was he devoted or delusional? Should she support it or oppose it? If she gave back his holotags, it would be her declaration of supporting his loyalty to the Brotherhood. After what they had just done to him, they didn't deserve him.

She was _still_ competing with Maxson for that devoted or delusional loyalty. Even after the elder had tried to kill him, condemned him to exile, and mauled everything he was with his intense hatred, Danse still exalted him.

 _"_ _If I'm seen by the Brotherhood out in the Wastes, not only would I be killed, but I'd undermine Maxson's authority. I won't do that."_

Could a mere woman ever hope to compare with the bond of brothers? Where Ilya wanted to rip out Maxson's beard and strangle him with it, Danse truly believed that Maxson's reaction had been just, his words sage-like and all-knowing. She wondered if his mourning was more for the Brotherhood, or for Maxson...

Frowning, her finger traced the rim of Danse's holotag, her thumb skimming the print of his personal detail and service number. As the days died on, Danse died with them. Little by little, piece by piece. The bunker was haunted by pain and memories, the shadows in the corners festering with wounds and taunts at what he was and what he had lost.

His entire life's purpose.

She couldn't even imagine the warfare in his head right now, but she knew it must be bleeding him dry slowly but surely. She could see it in his eyes every time he thought she wasn't watching him. He would just sit and stare into those shadows, _letting_ them wound and taunt him. Like he was giving up.

She had to get him out of this fucking bunker. It was killing him.

But with each day rolling over the next, her subtle nuances and suggestions to lure him outside were wearing a welt on him, and she feared the welt might burst on her soon and shove her away. Three days on, and the first night in the bunker was but a distant memory.

* * *

 _Ilya had taken Danse by the hand and gently guided him back inside the bunker. He had been slow to follow in her step, bereft of the will for anything but despair. She suspected that if left to his own will, he would have lingered out in the cold grasp of night until dawn's fingers of light roused him._

 _She tended to his laser burn first, seating him in a chair on one of the pre-war consoles. He sat without word or protest, vacant and bleary. First, Ilya had taken great care in examining the scald on his right shoulder. The material of his uniform had melted into the flesh, and because there was no hot water source or clean towel to safely slough off the material, it would need to be peeled away in order for the healing to start. The worst way to deal with a scald, but the longer the material stayed there, the more it would fuse with the skin. So she would need to cut around the wound first._

 _"_ _Does it hurt?"_

 _Danse had gradually lifted his eyes to her query, then nodded._

 _"_ _Okay, only second-degree burn then." If it was third-degree, he would feel no pain as the nerve endings would have literally been fried. The laser had skimmed his shoulder, but if it had made a direct impact, it would probably be third-degree. The only bad thing about it was that it was going to be excruciating._

 _He endured her trimming motions around the border of the wound with only a fixed grimace, each gentle tug of the material shredding his flesh in tiny detail. Once the wound was separated from his uniform, Ilya had offered him a Med-X. He had refused._

 _"_ _I want to feel the pain."_

 _"_ _I don't think you understand how much this is going to hurt..."_

 _"_ _No. I understand."_

 _"_ _...Danse, this is virtually going to skin your shoulder. I'm not doing this without meds. You could pass out."_

 _"_ _I won't."_

 _"_ _Danse..."_

 _"_ _I'll do it myself."_

 _He had lifted his opposite hand to the wound, fully intending to go through with it, but Ilya stopped him. "Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you."_

 _It began with her tender pries at the corner of the blackened fabric. Danse had bitten down on a flinch and blown out a full breath. The peeling began, slow and steady with pressure applied to the surrounding area. His groans began, smothered in his throat, face contorted for endurance, fists gathered and white knuckled. Ilya had pleaded with him over and over to give him a shot of Med-X, but he just refused over and over._

 _Near the end, his muffled cries tore at the bunker walls, and at Ilya's heart._

 _She had flowed through the healings of his wounds after that, Danse pale and trembling, but eerily satisfied. When his wounds were rinsed and laced with bandages, he had continued to stare into some distant land, eyes seeming almost black against his drained complexion._

 _Ilya had kneeled before him, cupped his face in her fingertips, and guided his eyes to her. She didn't say anything, she just guided him over to a corner of the bunker, set her pack down as a pillow, and pulled him down with her._

 _Danse had been tentative with her so near, but as Ilya sidled closer to his chest and huddled in for warmth, one of his arms had draped over her and even tucked her in a little closer still. Neither of them spoke or gave voice to the meaning of their intimacy, they just drew from the silent comfort of each other. Ilya didn't wholly understand what they had together, but she just knew that they needed to be close to each other. It was instinctual._

 _Trying to comfort a strong man in a time of weakness was always a dangerous art of instinct and careful navigation of finesse, wrought with many a risk and consequence. One wrong move and he could bottle up or lash out. But she and Danse shared something nebulous, something more than companionship, friendship, or that soldiers in arms connection. They were kindred spirits. Bonded._

 _Before sleep took them, Dogmeat had sidled up near their heads, gifting each of them a goodnight lick through their dusty hair before dipping his head into his paws._

 _Then it had struck._

 _Ilya had thrust awake to Danse's arm locking her to him while he groaned and grumbled in violent spasms, his body rigid in the woes of his slumber. He was clammy with cold sweat_ , _clenched, as if he were enduring total bodily pain on a scale to eclipse his threshold, and his heart was a cascade of drums against her_. _Dogmeat had been keeping to a distance, watching his alpha with ears pinned back and an anxious whimper in his chest._

 _This was the first time she had seen his PTSD in the flesh. One of its many faces, but its face, nonetheless. Ilya had known that one never woke an experienced soldier from sleep, especially a nightmare, unless one didn't value their own lives. But she couldn't leave him to the maw of his demons._

 _"_ _Danse," she had whispered, hand on his cold, taut chest. But he was in too deep for a gentle awakening. She knew that, but her cowardice made her give a timid attempt. Gathering a breath, she shook him more forcefully. "Danse, wake up, you're okay!"_

 _There was a shudder and a ragged gasp before Ilya saw his dark shape move like lightning and felt cold fingers bind around her throat. His weight pinned her, and she gagged as his thumbs pressed deep into her larynx, cutting her air supply. Slapping at his grip, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited, prayed, that he would come through his fog and realise what he was doing._

 _Seconds turned to more, and her chest began to burn and throb, a swallow caught on his thumbs causing her a dry cough. Her fingers began to pry at his of their own accord, and she opened her eyes to his, dark and wild and_ not _his. It was then that real fear crept into her. This wasn't even Danse. Danse was still in there somewhere._

 _For a fleeting moment of near hallucination, Ilya imagined Danse waking in the morning to find her dead beside him, finger marks bruising her throat. She knew it would mean his death, too. The thought was so tragic that it called tears to trickle from the corners of her eyes._

 _Against her body's will for survival, she had lifted one of her hands from fighting his grip and guided it up through her numbing haze, seeing it waver in her fading vision before it landed against his cheek. She couldn't even feel the texture of his face, but just seeing it on his face was enough of a goodbye._

 _His eyes had blinked into clarity, and his hands left her throat. Air assaulted her lungs, then pain ripped through her innards as her senses gushed back, and a cough ripened everything. She could hear and see Danse chanting her name in distress, his hands on her shoulders, but coughs wracked her body and kept her from responding._

 _"_ _Ilya! Ilya, breathe, breathe. My god, did I do this to you? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. You shouldn't have woken me. I should have known this could happen. I should have known. Why didn't I think of this happening? This is my fault. I'm sorry, Ilya. I'm so sorry."_

 _Eventually, she had recovered enough for him to lift her upright, her voice coarse against her throat. "Danse, I know." She swallowed through what felt like splinters. "The PTSD. I know."_

 _His distress morphed into something else. Shame. His hands had eased off her shoulders. "How?"_

 _"_ _It doesn't matter..."_

 _"_ _How, Ilya?" he pressed, stern._

 _"_ _...The Prydwen's medical records."_

 _Danse had jawed on that in silence. If he was angry she had snooped his files, he didn't show it._

 _She reached out to his arm. "This is why you are alive, and not a machine."_

 _But with a shake of his head, he pushed her hand from his arm and secured his gaze to the ground. "Don't wake me again, I'm a danger to you. I could have killed you. Stay away." He handed her pack over. "Sleep on the other wall. Please."_

 _"_ _Danse, I—"_

 _"_ _Stay away, Ilya."_

 _Reluctantly, she had obeyed. She didn't sleep for the remainder of the night, and by Danse's light breathing, neither had he._

* * *

He had woken up a different man after that night. Ilya had formed enough of a companionship with grief to recognise the process of it, and when it could go astray and turn down the dead-end road of implosion. She couldn't let him end up like her.

Shock, denial, anger, depression, then acceptance, the final stage of grief, whether that acceptance meant to move on, or... give up. But Ilya couldn't recognise where Danse was in that process. He was nowhere and everywhere all at once. She suspected the reason was because he wasn't even letting himself mourn, intent on damming up and pushing through it all, trying to put on a brave face, for her sake. That alone made her sick with guilt. He was so impossibly noble that even at rock bottom, he was still, _still_ putting her before himself. The fucking selfless, noble, lionhearted, outstandingly stubborn bastard.

Each day devoured him, drawing him deeper into his lost void. The first days had plateaued, like it hadn't really hit him yet. Now he was just lost.

She had to suck up her own despair and be strong for him, now more than ever, because if he wouldn't let himself mourn his life, then he would end up like Maxson. Like her.

Cold, twisted, dead machines.

* * *

Day one:

He awoke late—she had let him sleep in and rest up, especially after his episode last night, and who knew how long he had gone since having a good night's sleep. Though she didn't let him sleep in for too long. She knew how dangerous it was to let oneself fall into the habit of being bedridden to sleep away the time and wallow in the escape from depression. Hibernating was the bane of depression. She would know.

 _"_ _Hey..."_ Ilya had roused him with a gentle whisper, waiting for him to twitch with consciousness before placing a hand on his shoulder. _"It's morning."_

Danse had rolled his weight her way and peered up at her through hazy browns. Browns that were rich and earthy again, brighter and less bloodshot. His complexion was more even, the grayish pallor layered beneath less evident, less shadowed, lines yielding less to the strain of labour. So he had managed some sleep in the morning hours. Good.

Ilya had unrolled him a tender smile as he continued to peer at her, still working himself through the mist of slumber. _"I made you some coffee. Black, double shot, just the way you like it."_ He blinked and hummed, so she urged the steaming cup under his nose to entice a reaction with the aroma. Much to her horror, she had filled the cup too high and the motion pushed a small tsunami of liquid over the rim of the cup, and onto Danse's uniform. _"Shit!"_

There was a miniscule flare of pain in his features as the liquid burned through the material, but he otherwise shrugged off her apology. _"Doesn't matter. I won't be needing the uniform any longer."_

Her heart had pinched at the cold serving of truth in his voice, and then the raw hurt in the hidden depths of his eyes as that cold serving sank in.

His years of military routine and conditioning enabled him to rise on autopilot and without much protest. Ilya had already whipped up a big breakfast for him with what supplies she had stuffed in her pack. Brotherhood soldiers were worked hard and needed a metric shit-tonne of food, and often—they had the metabolisms of super mutants on a cocktail of Buffout and Psycho, and Danse was... _had_ been at the top of the food chain when it came to physical conditioning. All muscle, dense where it mattered and lean where it needed to be. The perfect Brotherhood specimen... She would know if his depression began to eat away at him if he started losing muscle mass.

She settled across from him on her sleeping bag with her own coffee, sipping idly, trying not to smother him by hovering. He ate vacantly, barely savouring the taste or texture of the food, though he did make the effort to thank her. She noted how the thanking lacked an accompanying smile. He was sluggish and only responsive to her soft prompts when it was absolutely necessary, though it was clear he wasn't up for talking about anything, very careful not to be rude to her. She almost wanted him to be rude and yell at her to quit mothering him, just to show some spark of life.

He endured Ilya fussing over her shitty field dressings for his wounds, bearing down on the pain with a clenched jaw as she dabbed vodka on the gummy layer of raw flesh over his laser burn, then manually dissected dirt and grit from the bite wound on his forearm with a pair of tweezers. Blood seepage was renewed from bitten vessels while she aggravated them, but that couldn't be avoided if she wanted to properly clean the wound to deter infection. Despite the extent of his wounds and Ilya's limited medical know-how, Danse repeatedly refused to see that shady doctor that often passed through the Slog—thank fuck for Stimpaks.

 _"_ _I need to lay low and keep off the grid, at least for a few days... wait for the storm to blow over."_

Ilya hadn't argued with that. It made sense, though keeping a low profile was one thing, and holing up away from the world was another. Nevertheless, she let it go and told him to rest, using his wounds as an excuse without stating the obvious. _You need to have a good cry and throw some shit around._ She would make the bunker somewhat liveable with the supplies and materials she could scavenge or trade for.

But he wasn't having any of that. Oh no. He refused to rest. His insistence was eerily devoid of that natural authority, but Ilya knew when he was putting his foot down to stomp her in her place without hopes of escape. He may let her push him around and have her way with him more often than not, but when he wanted to play boss, he was the boss, period. So she played nice and let him wear the pants, for now. The last thing they needed was a power struggle between the two of them.

Despite the laser scoring on his shoulder and his punctured forearm, Danse immediately began helping her by shoving out the industrial furniture and heavy consoles that limned the bunker, gathering the useless material in one corner, and the useful material in another. The furniture that was usable, like desks, tables, and cabinets, was placed in the first section of the bunker in a tight, almost homely circle.

 _"_ _If there's anything I can't stand, it's an unorganized mess,"_ he had declared with arms akimbo on his hips, looking around at his nesting skills with satisfaction.

But it seemed he wasn't fond of refurbishing the second section of the bunker behind the collapsed wall. Ilya wasn't fond of the demons in there, either. Once they had shifted out everything they needed from there, they made an unspoken agreement to never go in there again.

Ilya had made a scavenging run outside the bunker, and then a trip to the Slog nearby. At first she had been apprehensive about leaving Danse down in that haunted tomb alone, and she dared not voice it to him. Eventually, after much stalling and pathetic excuses, she figured he might need some alone-time to finally mull over recent events, without being able to distract himself with her or the renovations—men like Danse tended to prefer processing their manly and forbidden emotions in a vacuum. And deep down, she knew he wouldn't do anything... fatal. Not down in the bunker where she could find him. She wouldn't insult everything he was by even thinking that; he was incapable of that level of selfishness, especially after she had gotten through to him with exactly how much he meant to her. His words attested to that.

 _"_ _I didn't plan to spend the rest of my days at this old listening post, but it will have to do. Besides, you're still going to need my help, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let you wander the Commonwealth alone."_

In return, he had been apprehensive about her going out on the surface alone, despite the fact that she was a highly trained soldier and experienced survivalist, and that the Slog was only a short walk. He didn't have much excuses to go on, and Ilya knew the foundations of his concern stemmed from his PTSD and the intense need for him to be in control of all situations that involved his squadmates. He insisted she take Dogmeat with her. She insisted Dogmeat stay with him. He insisted more. So did she. He eventually insisted harder. She compromised and told Dogmeat to stay outside the elevator at the bunker's surface. But she didn't tell Danse that.

On the off chance that he was going to give her the slip in the delusion of being a burden on her, Dogmeat would track him to the ends of the earth. Ilya wasn't taking any chances of losing him now.

Wiseman and the other Ghoul farmers that had been rescued from the quarry welcomed Ilya with open arms and fond smiles. She had vaguely explained that her and a friend were staying in the nearby bunker and were interested in trading for supplies. She didn't explain why they were roughing it down there, and they didn't ask, with her shifty eyes and edgy glances. She couldn't afford to be spotted by a random Brotherhood patrol or passing vertibird; they would take note of her location and might want to investigate Danse's 'remains.'

After trading for what she needed with her bountiful pouch of caps, the Ghouls had assisted Ilya in hauling the workbenches and supplies over into the bunker elevator—Dogmeat had soaked up the attention and wasted no time in flopping over to hint for belly rubs. Wiseman waited for his settlers to disperse back on the trail home, then approached Ilya with earnest black eyes.

 _"_ _You're sure everything's all right? If you need help or a place to stay, you're more than welcome to slum it with us. We owe you our lives, after all."_

Ilya had smiled gratefully at his offer. _"Thanks, Wiseman, but we'll be okay... though, could you keep this to yourself if anyone comes asking after me? Unless it's Deacon or anyone else from my crew."_

She had thought of sending a radio transmission out over the Minutemen channel to let them know they were okay, but decided against it, just in case anyone from the Brotherhood was listening in—which they probably were, because Maxson was a paranoid, hairy butthole. Even if she didn't verbally give her location, they might be able to triangulate her position. She kinda regretted her last words to Deacon now. He probably thought she had been suicidal... well, in retrospect, she kinda had been. For Danse.

He had been deep into a set of pushups when she breached the elevator doors with a weapon's workbench and her first load of supplies. His olive uniform, still soiled with a plethora of sweat, dirt, blood, and coffee, had been peeled down to his hips, and his rippled body was sheathed in a thick layer of sweat. It was clear he had been at it for a while now, yet instead of being pissed that he hadn't taken the time to rest up, Ilya had been caught up in the view and fell victim to her body's response, remembering the feel of that hard, hot body against hers.

Her face had burned and heat gathered in another area where it wasn't welcomed. Dogmeat had no such qualms, rushing over to Danse for a sloppy greeting mid-pushup. Danse copped a raspy tongue to the mouth, right where he hated it the most, and faltered in his motions. It was then that he noticed Ilya standing in the open elevator like a dimwit, staring redfaced with her jaw slack and tongue hanging out to drool like the dirty pervert she was. Having lived and breathed the military for a great chunk of her life, one would think she'd be used to seeing shirtless, ripped and sweaty men. But this was _Danse_.

Danse had stood and Ilya had averted her eyes, and they had both sputtered something borderline apologetic, before staring at each other some more.

Ilya couldn't help herself. His uniform was draped so low on his hips that it revealed the triangular cut of his lower oblique muscles, dark hair shivering up them. Those muscles were as chiselled as all hell. She was a sucker for those damned things.

As the silence stretched and grew dense with heat, it was clear that neither of them knew where they stood with each other. Yet Ilya had been fine with that, content to spectate as beads of sweat trickled down Danse's taxed muscles.

She had to wonder if he had done this one on purpose...

The way they had stared across at each other threatened to snap the leash on lust and let them at each other like starving beasts, but as much as Ilya had wanted to peel off the rest of his uniform with her claws and teeth, she knew better than to take advantage of him in this time of trauma, even if he wanted her to. She wasn't about to let him distract himself with her in _that_ way. They valued each other more than that, despite the temptation of a quick fix. His obvious intention.

 _You slick, dirty devil._

 _"_ _So are you going to put all that hard work to good use and help me with this workbench, or not?"_

Her sassy segue poured clarity into his thoughts, and a brief, introspective frown marred his brow, the glimpse of regret before he reached to towel himself off. _"Yeah, of course. Let me give you a hand."_

She had assumed that the pun had not been intended.

 _Nice try. But mourn with your head, Danse. Not your dick._

* * *

Day two:

Dusk through to dawn had been thick with the grunts and violent shiftings of Danse's nightmares, broken by his merciless awakenings that had him hauling in air and drenched in cold sweat. Each time he was assailed by his demons, Ilya had rushed across to his sleeping bag, captured his hand in a vice grip, and soothed him through the jagged transition to reality.

The first few times, he had tried to resist her aid. First thinking she was an enemy come to slit his throat, grabbing her by the wrists with the intent of breaking them, but her calls were crisp and sharp, breaking him from the instinct at once.

 _"_ _It's me! It's Ilya. It's okay. You're okay. I'm here. I'm not going to hurt you."_

His eyes had been ablaze with such a medley of emotions, all tangling together with such friction that all he could do was blast out a breath of taut, pent adrenaline and release a frantic whine. As soon as his grip on her wrists dwindled, she had buried her fear of him and swooped in close, cupping his shivering jaw. She hadn't known where he was or what was hunting him, but she would bring him back from it and keep the demon away, regardless of her unknown enemy.

 _"_ _I've got you, just breathe. You're not there. It can't hurt you. You're in the bunker. With me. I've got you."_

 _"_ _You shouldn't—I told you—To keep away from me,"_ he had panted between gasps and growls, entire body wracked with the struggle. He avoided her eyes, humiliated, and his hands rose to her wrists once more to pry her off, but Ilya batted them away to retake his face and force him to meet her eye.

 _"_ _You're not pushing me away, Danse. I'm not gonna let it take you like that. I'm fighting this with you, whether you like it or not."_

He was drained of the strength to contend her, instead just furrowing his brow and slumping with weary defeat, bowing into the fight for breath.

The second time, his subconscious had adapted to her presence and he hadn't seized her violently, but after she had pulled him back to reality with tender whispers and caresses, he insisted again that she should keep away.

Ilya didn't.

The third bout of mnemonic abuse had him wrenching awake to seek out her grounding presence before she had even reached him. He gripped her hand like a lifeline and then smothered his head down against the ground, grimacing through the last slashes of his flashbacks and the volts of his panicked adrenaline. Ilya couldn't even imagine what horrors dragged on him in his nightmares for such a strong, controlled man to be plagued with such terror. His eyes said it all. It was like staring through glass orbs at the demon within, the wretched being that possessed him and stared back at her with a taunting smile, and Danse was in there with it, screaming silent. A lost phantom.

They weren't his eyes.

This happened three more times throughout the night, and each time when his heavy breathing would abate and he was ready to return to his personal hell, he would thank her, apologise for waking her, caution her against waking him too quickly, and then would roll over and surrender himself for torture once more.

 _"_ _Is it always this bad?"_ Ilya had asked one time.

 _"_ _No. Not for a long time..."_

When morning finally lifted the curse, Danse had been awake before Ilya this time. Judging by the indigo shading his eyes and the emphasised lines of wear and tear again, the night had stolen years from his lifespan. He had been buried at the weapons workbench, stripping and cleaning his laser rifle, engrossed frown armed and steady on his task. He was dressed in the flannel shirt and jeans she had traded for him at the Slog, and he was a quaint sight stripped down to civilian leisure, though it wasn't unpleasant. In fact, it was oddly charming, and gave him a softer mirage. It had occurred to her that she had never seen him in anything other than military attire. He would always be her Paladin Danse, but the civilian Danse was refreshing and... indulgent.

He probably felt awkward as fuck, however. Dedicated soldiers were notoriously bad at blending in with the hubbub of society. They tended to stick out like sore thumbs with rigid knuckles and sharpened nails, and Danse had attested to that every time he followed her into civilian centres around the Commonwealth, from Diamond City to Goodneighbour, and even at the Minutemen Castle he had alienated her makeshift soldiers with his tense posture and grim facial set. He couldn't act casual for shit. But now, she wondered how much of that had been simple soldier edginess, or the PTSD hounding at his heels, lurking in every shadow, hunting him from every corner, or behind every set of eyes that befell him... Still, Ilya had understood, remembering how much of a struggle it had been for her to domesticate herself with Nate again. Now, she was probably a little _too_ lax for a soldier.

Once a soldier, always a soldier.

Dogmeat had been sitting contently at Danse's side, eyeing his work with fascination, head tilting adorably every time the man's tools made a loud chime against metal. She was so grateful to have him back, alive and seemingly well—same went for the man, forever grateful she had been enough to stay his hand from pulling that trigger. Both her best boys, alive and safe with her... both burdened by the same demon, but alive and safe under her protection. Ilya had briefly wondered if the canine's acute senses detected that Danse was a synth... Either way, it wouldn't matter one bit to him. Neither did it matter to her.

Dogmeat's senses proved to be acute as he honed in on Ilya's rousing with perked ears. When the canine gave an excited wriggle and scampered to her for a morning kiss and cuddle, Danse had immediately stopped what he was doing to dart over to the cooking station they had set up and retrieve a ready-heated cup of coffee.

Between the two of them and their insomniac habits, their stash of caffeine wouldn't last long.

 _"_ _Have you slept at all?"_ he asked mildly as she sat up and cradled her coffee to ward off the cold bunker air. What was this, reverse psychology? _She_ should be brewing _him_ coffee.

 _"_ _A little,"_ she had lied. _"You?"_

 _"_ _A little,"_ he participated in the lie. Then he had hovered in place, anguish enhancing his gloomy cast. _"I'm sorry you were exposed to all of that last night. It's never been that bad before... I should have anticipated it and warned you."_

She had slanted her head sympathetically. _"You've just been through hell, Danse. You're stressed to the max. Give yourself a break."_

The anguished slackening of his features had suddenly pulled taut. _"You shouldn't have had to see me like that... at my worst. Tonight I'll sleep in the other section. Hopefully that will limit the disturbance."_

 _"_ _Hey, no,"_ Ilya had snatched at his nearest hand as it hung loosely above her. Surprise lit his face. _"You're not sleeping in there. I said I'm fighting this with you, and I meant it... I'll always have your back, even in the worst of times. I promise."_ She had partnered her words with a nostalgic smile.

Echoing his old promise to her had struck a chord. Hope and guilt had fluctuated in his eyes, and he had taken a long moment to consider her, before shaking his head. _"This isn't fair on you. You have your own worries to deal with and a war to prepare for. You should return to the Prydwen."_

So Ilya had set her coffee down beside her sleeping bag, and stood, sheltering his hand within both of hers. _"I'm not letting it tear us apart. And I'm not leaving you alone down here."_

 _"_ _Maxson will be needing your presence to push the war effort forward. The Minutemen need you."_

 _She had stifled a reflex scowl at the mere thought of the elder, an image of strangling him with his own beard rolling through her thoughts for the hundredth time. "Maxson's a big boy, he doesn't need me to hold his dick and whip it around for him." Her offhand humour had died on Danse. Inappropriate and unappreciated. What was new? "And Ronnie is more than capable of keeping him from using the Minutemen as cannon fodder again. They don't need me."_

 _"_ _The Minutemen idolise you more than you realise, and they trust you to hold your own against Maxson. You're the only thing keeping this alliance together."_ His tone had been more assertive. _"They do need you."_

 _"_ You _need me."_

Danse had caught his tongue and failed to tame the concur shivering through his brow. It was the truth and he knew it. He was just too proud and too noble to admit it.

Ilya had softened her approach. _"I'm here if you need to talk things over... your identity, or the PTSD, battle or combat-fatigue, whatever they call it now, I'm here to listen..."_

The shift of his manner had been brittle. _"I can't."_ His hand had gone rigid in hers and he pulled away, rattled and edgy like a cornered creature. _"I... I just... I can't. I'm sorry."_

Ilya had nodded to allay his pacing. _"It's all right, no pressure, no rush. Just wanted to make sure you know I'm here when you need me."_

She had watched with a troubled frown as he moved back to his corner and buried himself back into his diligent rifle maintenance; he had somehow managed to occupy himself with that for the rest of the entire day. Either it was still too raw, or he was still refusing to confront it all. She couldn't blame him. First the PTSD, and now finding out he was a synth and being outcast from the Brotherhood by the man whom he had considered a brother... Fuck, how he even managed to get out of bed was beyond her.

Morosely sipping at her coffee, Ilya had pulled on her pair of jeans and a plain white hoodie, padding over on bare feet to the makeshift campfire. The fire was simmering languidly between the blocks of cement that braced it in place, and there had been a tray of assorted fruits and lightly roasted vegetables for her. Despite the fact that Danse was too concerned with looking after her rather than himself, Ilya had smiled. He knew she liked fruit and veges in the morning—packed full of nutrients, minus the rads, and light and easy to digest. And despite current circumstances, it felt oddly natural playing house with Danse. She had blocked the pang that reminded her of Nate, before asking Danse if he had eaten already.

 _"_ _Wasn't hungry."_

Ilya's heart had given a heavy pump and her smile had ebbed. Red flag.

* * *

Day three:

Ilya had made a point of getting up before Danse, setting her Pip-Boy alarm on its quietest tone. She had taken a moment just to observe him in his slumber across from her sleeping bag—he thankfully hadn't moved to sleep in the other room. He was on his back, breathing deep and even, face serene and eyelids motionless—he wasn't in REM sleep, so he wasn't dreaming. Good. He may not be getting a deep sleep, but the silver lining of no nightmares was something worth preserving.

Smothering her desire to curl up with him and guard his sleep with soft strokes through his hair, Ilya had also smothered a groan and dragged her ass up.

Time to cook up a breakfast fit for a soldier.

Whispering and signalling for Dogmeat to keep his nose out of her ingredients and fuck-off out of her kitchen space, she began with a base of Yum Yum Deviled Eggs, straining to scramble them over the fire as deftly as possible as not to wake Danse—his hypervigilance didn't abate with sleep. She gathered a fresh bundle of tatos, courtesy of their neighbours at The Slog, and diced them into generous chunks with her sterilised combat knife, tossing them in with the eggs. She had winced at the resulting sizzle, stealing a look back at Danse, but he hadn't stirred. Phew.

She briefly thought about adding some meat for an extra dose of protein to compliment the eggs, but then had decided against it; meat was a bad choice for the first meal of the day, as it typically digested slowly and put plainly, caused constipation. She didn't want to be the culprit of that for either of them...

She had settled for a large helping of more vegetables, grating over some corn, carrots, and the crushed and lightly crisped petals of a hubflower for some eccentric spice. Ilya had silently thanked Codsworth for teaching her the trade of being a good housewife fresh out of the military, but also Deacon for his flair with Wasteland cuisine. The shady spy could cook up one heck of a mirelurk cake with salsa. He wouldn't share the salsa recipe, however...

Ilya had blended together her best infusion of coffee with her stash of pre-war mix, silt beans, and a dash of oil, poured some of the blend from the pot into a cup, and set it over the fire to heat while she waited for the scrambled eggs and veges to golden up. By that point, it all smelled fucking outstanding.

Outstanding enough for Danse to sniff awake. _"Building something?"_ he had asked with a perky curiosity.

 _Building?_ Ilya had tossed him a smile over her shoulder, surprised to see him sitting up in the shroud of his sleeping bag watching her, before answering with a smartass, _"Yeah, I'm building breakfast."_

Danse had stared at her to absorb her snipe, but he didn't usher up his usual dismissive smile. Instead, he just gave a forced huff to acknowledge the humour. She had noted that he hadn't smiled since his exile.

 _"_ _What can I do to help?"_ He was peeling out of his sleeping bag.

 _"_ _Ut!"_ Ilya had tsked, aiming her combat knife at him in mock threat. _"No you don't. Maxson ever make you breakfast in bed? Didn't think so. I have a leg up on him there."_

 _"_ _Ilya..."_

 _"_ _No bitching,"_ she had grinned. _"Just sit your ass down."_

 _"_ _Stop it."_

His gruff tone had caused Ilya to drop her smile and turn back to him with sudden concern. He had been standing, giving her a stern look that sobered her at once. She had paled with how insensitive she realised she was being, joking about fighting over him with Maxson and bribing his loyalty with breakfast in bed.

Danse sighed out a heated breeze. _"Just, stop mothering me. Please. I'm not some broken machine that you can coddle and fix."_

 _"_ _I know you're not. You're not a machine at all. This is all as human as it gets and time is the only thing to fix it, I know that. But I just want to help."_

But Danse had employed a determined veneer against her, just like she had feared he would if she pushed too hard. Steel had overcast his eyes and she had wilted under them. _"This isn't your burden to bear, Ilya. I won't let it drag you down with me. You have a war to prepare for, a militia depending on your leadership, and you should be back on the Prydwen doing just that instead of being cooped down here with me and my malfunctions."_

 _"_ _Malfunctions?"_ Ilya had echoed him, slackening her jaw with sorrowful disbelief. _"Is that what you think this is? A malfunction?"_ He had said nothing in response, holding her eye under a hard set brow. Maxson's words had tumbled through her memory.

 _"_ _Delusions, or is the machine malfunctioning?"_

She had clamped her jaw and strode toward him. Danse had foreseen the confrontation and sought to run from it, turning from her to make for the damned workbench, but she caught his arm. _"You are not malfunctioning and you are not a machine,"_ she growled at him steadily.

 _"_ _Just go back to the Prydwen, Harper. You have bigger problems to concern yourself with,"_ he deflected her, making another attempt for the workbench _. "You're wasting your time here."_

 _"_ _No, don't do that,"_ she caught him again by the wrist, and he growled, though didn't rip himself away. _"Don't go back to calling me Harper and keeping me at a distance. Don't let this tear us apart."_

He had braved facing her, facing the root of his woes, but his face was rendered a decrepit landscape in the effort. _"Don't you understand? This thing, this PTSD, it isn't real because_ I'm _not real. It's a glitch in my systems that can only be rectified with..."_ His brow had hardened to summon mettle. _"With termination."_

Ilya's veins had carried cold blood. _"Please don't say that..."_

 _"_ _It had to be said,"_ he lamented flatly, before an inkling of pity entered his eyes. _"But just because it's the truth, doesn't mean I'm committing myself to it. I told you that I'm staying in the Commonwealth to help you fight this war, and that's a promise I don't intend to break."_

 _"_ _You can't live like that, Danse, thinking of yourself as this mindless drone fighting at my side without any self-worth."_ Her words rang hollow. _Because that's me,_ Ilya had thought with horror, realising he was on the right track to her dead end.

 _"_ _That's the way of an efficient machine. Executing its purpose without the hindrance of self-awareness or worth to endanger the mission."_ He had been cold, stark, clinical. Had anything she had been telling him ever hit home? She ached hearing he still thought of himself as a machine. The brave face he had been wearing was so meticulously constructed that it had even fooled her.

She had intensified her gaze to rival the stalwart intensity of his. _"You have to live for yourself. The classic shit about living, not just surviving. You need personal aspirations to keep you alive, you can't just set outside goals at the expense of your wellbeing, no matter how strong you build your walls up. It will eat you alive from the inside out and eventually it will drive you insane."_ Ilya had desperately wanted to use herself as an example, but she couldn't bring down her own walls lest he see how damaged she really was and campaign even harder to save her and doom himself. She had to be strong for him, even if it meant going against her own advice. So she used Maxson as her example. _"Think of Maxson. He's dedicated his whole life to the Brotherhood and his future vision for mankind, surrendered his entire childhood to it, and he's a dead man walking because of that. Did you ever see him happy, genuinely? Does he respect himself for his ethics, or does he just hide behind the ethics of the Brotherhood and use his dogma as a shield from his own ugly soul? Does he value the people around him as anything more than tools, or has he just trained himself not to feel so it can't hurt him? He didn't value you."_ She had felt an electric itch in her fingertips to touch Danse's pulsing jaw, but tamped the urge to keep from mothering him further. It had been painful. It just felt wrong not to touch him. _"Either it's eaten Maxson and he's already dead inside, or it's still eating him and he goes to sleep every night hating the very thing he is and wondering when he'll finally be dead inside. Either way, he's a walking ghost. But you're a better man than he is, Danse. You're more human than he is. Don't you see? The PTSD makes you human. The fact that everything touches you so intently means you're alive inside and you're fighting back. Don't push the pain away, embrace it."_

He had been breathing heavily by the time she finished, listening with such conflicted perspective that he couldn't process it all, or didn't want to. His eyes had been stubbornly rooted on some far object, and upon fixing them back on her, they had been severe. _"Arthur is_ not _dead inside_. _I know the two of you don't see eye-to-eye, but I won't tolerate you belittling everything he is before me. You've known him for a mere few months, and have only recently known him on a personal level. I've known him for many years. I've known him since he was just a boy. An innocent boy born into a predetermined life in a world of chaos, expected to be the pillar of valour that would bring about the calm and order in that chaos. And while I wasn't entrusted to his honour guard or his personal care, I watched from afar as he grew into the role that was forced upon him. Not because he wanted to, but because he must. Later, when we were reunited, at just sixteen he was already more of a man than any brother I had ever spilled my blood for. And when Cutler... after Cutler, I vowed to guard my last true brother with my life to prevent him from meeting the same fate. So I won't stand idle while you slander his name."_

With that, Danse had turned his back and stormed off, not for the workbench, but for the cave exposed through the collapsed wall of the bunker. Ilya had been entrenched where she stood, burned and burning.

* * *

An eerie lapse had fallen through the bunker as time waned that day. Dogmeat had meandered listlessly back and forth along the gulf between his pack leaders, his sullen whines a plea for them to reconcile.

Ilya had buried herself in whatever task she could think up to escape the misery clouding over her. She boiled their supply of water to purify it, she wiped their generous stockpile of tarberries from The Slog to rid them of dirt, she prepped a stew pot of vegetable soup and left it to marinate, she maintained her weapons and armour, she rinsed her black jumpsuit uniform and left it to soak out the blood stains, and then she did the same for Danse's uniform, pondering on how best to patch up the gaping hole in his shoulder where she had cut it away from his burn.

Danse had not resurfaced from the cave, no sounds of life breaking the gloom, and she worried. Not that he had offed himself, she knew him well enough to know he wouldn't do that, at least not for her to find him. Just that he was suffering alone in there.

Ilya knew that he was not the kind of man that could simply be comforted through his troubles and eased with affection and emotional support. He needed solutions, strategies, coping mechanisms and mental affirmations. He was intellectual and productive, and so he needed to heal with such, coming to terms with events in a logical but intuitive manner. He needed purpose.

But that didn't mean that comfort and affection couldn't help him.

So Ilya had swallowed a knot in her throat and taken the walk, deftly stepping to the dank threshold of the cave. Her eyes sifted through the dark to see Danse slouched down against the earth wall, head resting back, staring absently into the second section of the bunker, where shit had gone down between them and his life had dangled in the balance of their wills.

 _"_ _Danse?"_

Her voice had broken him from his absence, his head turning her way in a slight roll, eyes featureless but glistening in the dark. _"I'm sorry."_

Ilya picked her way to him silently, lowered herself beside him, and joined him against the wall, easing her head against his shoulder. After a few quiet moments, she had felt the soft and comforting pressure of his head settling upon hers. Dogmeat had padded toward them not long after, approaching with a submissive slink and curling up by their feet.

* * *

Now, Ilya sat outside the bunker to savour the sunset and search for answers in the clouds. Today, Danse had slept through the time, declaring that he had a migraine. Whether that was true or not, she didn't know. But the thought of him giving in to the fight and finding escape in sleep killed her. How much longer could he go until even sleep wasn't enough of an escape?

The Prydwen caught her eye in the distant sky, a breathing metal beast calling her back. She shunned it with the flick of her gaze, fearing what it would mean if she had to go back.

Danse had her. But was she enough? Ilya knew what it was to have death lure her in, promising peace from the endless pain. She knew how powerful that dark presence was when it took up residence in the mind.

She and Danse were close, closer than ever in the aftermath of the reveal of his identity. But she doubted one close friend, or whatever they were, would be enough to hold back the presence in his mind from taking him even deeper. He was holding on for her, but could he keep that up forever?

A crackle tickled the air.

Ilya frowned at the familiar, dreaded radiation warning, glancing down at her Pip-Boy. Zero rads, yet that heat veiled her skin to ensure her she was being irradiated. This hadn't happened for a while, she had dared to hope it had vanished entirely.

No. She had to suppress her own demons and claw onto her sanity for Danse's sake. How could she support him through his darkness when she was slipping into her insanity?

Jet.

No. She quelled that, too.

 _I don't need Jet anymore. I can fight off the dark presence without it_.

Doom-Guy's slivering words came next.

 _"_ _There is comfort in it. Yes? A place to hide. A thing that knows you. A thing that speaks to you. Your own world, inside yourself."_

 _I'm not insane._

 _Yes, you are._

No. No, no, no. Ilya crunched Danse's holotags and stood, breathing the air of the Wastelands and forging a deep, determined scowl.

 _I'm stronger than this. I have to be. For Danse. For Nate and Shaun. For the war. For everyone and everything that depends on me._

Bolstered by her own resolve, Ilya turned and treaded for the bunker entrance. She tossed a quick look back to double check she hadn't been followed, and froze in place when her scan caught on a dark shape looming behind a sway of shrubs. It was the silhouette of a man, like the one she had seen down in the quarry, and it dissipated before her very eyes.

 _I'm not insane._

She fled into the bunker, terror nipping at her heels.

 _Yes, you are._

* * *

 **-A/N:** Really sorry for the delay, guys.

 **-Guest reviewer from previous chapter -** I had thought about the cut ending, but I don't think it would work with the relationship between Danse and Maxson in this fic for Danse to just turn on him like that, even if he disagreed with his methods. I also think that Bethesda cut that ending for a reason. It would have been too 'perfect' compared with the other faction endings. Fallout has typically been about compromise and neutralism, and every ending has its down sides. The Wasteland is a harsh reality and nobody makes it through unscathed. Sucks, but life is a bitch, and I love how fallout goes by that.


	48. Emotions, Dreams

**Emotions, Dreams**

* * *

 _"_ _Emotions, dreams, Danse. That's life... You are alive."_

If only his emotions weren't killing him. If only his dreams weren't killing him.

Danse watched over her as she slept. Across the bunker, on the opposite wall and through the shroud of darkness, Ilya lay serenely in her slumber. Her dark hair fell past her jawline to drape features that were clad in scarred but dewy, healthy skin. Intense, hardened, but emotive eyes were resting off-duty behind calm, closed lids that were underlined by full, black lashes. Luscious lips, marred only by a small, singular scar that slit up from her upper lipline, were slightly parted to free soft breaths. She was beautiful to watch.

Admittedly, Danse could find respite in watching her sleep for hours while he himself could not. Sleep was as rare for her as it was for him, and so watching her in the midst of that elusive paradise gave him an inkling of it, if only to taste it.

He was caught in the limbo of wanting nothing more than to sleep, yet finding himself irritatingly unable to grasp it and lock it down. He just wanted to take that blank exodus from himself, if only for a moment.

Danse also knew that part of him didn't even want to sleep. Yes, it was blissful to escape from the dreary agony of simply existing, but the escape was only momentary. He knew where that escape would take him. Back into the super mutant hive. Back into the ambush. Back to Cutler.

A flash of gore, rotting flesh and decay. The stink. The stain. The memories like grating nails down a chalkboard. The snap of combat. Chaos. Where is Cutler? Am I shooting Cutler? Was that him? So many faces, so many voices, all the same, all with lasers and plasma in their brains. Cutler? Cutler!

His pulse mounted from a trot to a canter at the mere thought of that memory, threatening to pickup into a gallop. Time and relentless occurrences had trained him to snuff out the panic-reflex of such fleeting recollections, and he focused on his breathing while shifting his thoughts.

He trailed his eyes over the curvature of Ilya's form beneath her sleeping bag, from the rise of those soft, wondrous breasts, down to the narrow dip of her waist, then sliding up again to the arch of her hips. Perhaps this wasn't the most ideal place to shift his thoughts... Yet no matter how he tried to smother the taboo-thought of slipping off her covers to reveal what lay inside, to touch and explore her body to find what pleased her most and exploit it, he couldn't stop himself. That night on the Prydwen had awoken something in him. _She_ had awoken something in him. Something so base and primal he had thought it was beneath him and his honour.

She had unravelled the bonds of a dormant creature in him, a creature that yearned for the rich depth of intimacy, a raw, carnal desire that filled his blood with heat he never knew could burn so hot. But not just any desire. Desire only for her. To wrap her in his hold, cherish the very atmosphere of her, and absorb every detail of her, and to ravish her and drown her in pleasure, to take her to where she lost grip of her sanity in that timeless burst of rapture, and to lose himself in her. He had suppressed it for so long. Too long. Though, he didn't wholly understand the nature of it. This was all so new to him. It grew from an ephemeral spark and then roared hotter and brighter until he quelled it with reality.

Synth. Machine. Riddled with glitches, representing the atrocity of creation, symbolising the fall of humankind. Ilya deserved better. She deserved a man. A great man.

A man like Arthur...

The thought had snuck up on him from nowhere. Ilya and Arthur. Something was transparently brewing between them, though whether or not it was mutual remained to be seen. Arthur had barely spared the time for women throughout his life, always too preoccupied with his work—much like himself. Danse had never seen Arthur mingle. It would have been unbecoming of him, in his position. Did he want Ilya? Did Ilya want him? More pressing, could Danse bear the reality of them coupling?

No. The answer rushed him from all flanks. No, he couldn't bare that reality, despite the blatant fact that he had no right to Ilya, no right to want her, even _touch_ her, being what he was. She and Arthur would be a perfect match; ambitious, inspiring, powerful leaders with the passion to fight for their visions and beliefs, and the undying wills to protect humanity. They would balance each other out and challenge one another to keep them both on their toes. Arthur wielded logic where Ilya wielded heart. An immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. Two opposing forces coming together for one cause. Together, they would be invincible. Perfect.

So why did Danse still want her? Why was he still entertaining the thought of having her? His mind was a hypocritical paradox. An abomination of shallow wants and needs.

Another malfunction?

His malfunctions had almost strangled the life from her.

With a grumbling sigh, Danse shed his sleeping bag covers and lifted himself up, roaming on lethargic feet to the cooking station to get some coffee set up. To his pleasant surprise, the pot had already been mixed, ready to be poured in the morning. There was also a pre-made and sealed bowl of vegetable soup.

Ilya.

Was it just part of being a woman to be so mothering? Well, she _had_ been a mother before the Great War. Technically, she still was, whether she had disowned Shaun or not. Had she? He realised that he had never taken the time to offer her a sympathetic ear about her son since that night out in the cabin, when she confessed her son's identity. He had no idea what was occurring inside her head in regards to Shaun, and he was ashamed of his neglect of her. Danse thought back to that night while he waited for his coffee and soup to heat.

 _"Shaun, being taken from Nate. The gunshot,"_ she had evoked her memory of her nightmare, pain in every syllable. _"It's always the same. It never stops."_

 _"How often are these nightmares occurring?"_ he had asked her.

 _"Every time I sleep. Some are more vivid than others. The sound of that gun... it's always the worst. It won't let me forget... God, I miss Nate."_

Danse remembered feeling jealousy spike his gut at that, and how he had hated himself for it. He hated himself tenfold for it now. Did she still love her husband...? Of course she did, he scolded himself. Death immortalised love. And she would still love her son, despite what he had become.

But Ilya's more recent words drifted through him...

 _"You're more important to me than anything else in this world..."_

Danse frowned into the crackling fire and rubbed the thickened stubble on his chin—he really needed to shave. What did she mean by her words? Was he more important to her than her son and the memory of her husband?

But... he was a machine...

 _"_ _I don't care who or what you are, you're still the same man I knew from day one."_

He peered back at her sleeping figure, studying her with a permanent frown of confusion. Did she... love him?

Did he love her?

Ilya released a small, sensual groan in her sleep and shifted a little, capturing a deeper breath that drifted out lingeringly from her lips. Danse repressed the sudden leap of his heartbeat and subsequent shot of blood to his groin, focusing instead on less indulgent thoughts.

Her nightmares. Recurrent nightmares. Did she still have them? Was she just as plagued as he? Whether or not she was, there was definitely something still plaguing her, something dark that terrified him as to what it was. Her words on Maxson's state of mind had been heavily laced with an introspective knowing... like she knew exactly how the elder was feeling. The words had been too detailed, too precise for her to have been spewing them on a tirade.

 _"_ _It will eat you alive from the inside out and eventually it will drive you insane... Either it's eaten Maxson and he's already dead inside, or it's still eating him and he goes to sleep every night hating the very thing he is and wondering when he'll finally be dead inside. Either way, he's a walking ghost."_

Had Ilya been projecting? Was _she_ a walking ghost?

Danse twisted back to the fire and buried his head in his hands, raking his fingers back through his greasy hair. He and Ilya. Both of them. Both of them were so inflicted by deep seeded woes. And all he could think about was how much he wanted her. He was repulsive. Selfish and repulsive.

Anger bubbled in his chest, driving him to his feet to pace in the darkness of the bunker. His head hurt. That incessant throbbing that magnified with each heavy step he took, yet he kept taking them. Too much was in his head. Too much. Just too much. All of it a whirring, clashing backdrop that followed his step without fault, no matter how fast he paced. He just couldn't outpace it all. Steel be with him, it hurt so goddamned much.

What, was he so weak that he was about to have a panic attack for the fear of having a panic attack? That was the bane of it right there. The inescapable cycle as it feasted on fear.

Danse stopped his heated pacing and clenched his fists, tuning into the rhythm of his breathing. No. Not here, where she could see him reduced to a feeble, panting mess at the whim of his malfunctions. He was in control, not the glitches.

He just wanted it all to stop.

The implications of that thought caught Danse off guard, and his breathing fell from haste to paced to shallow as he rolled those implications around in his head for deeper inspection. There was only one way for all of it to stop... But that was _not_ an option. Because of her.

Diverting his mind again from himself and to Ilya, however shamefully, eased away the tension in his chest and lulled his bloodflow. She was the one thing, the only thing, keeping him sane. It terrified the hell out of him. If he lost her...

Stop thinking these things and perhaps you will stop having these anxiety attacks, Danse scolded himself once more, stomping back to the fire to snatch up his coffee and soup. He stared into the sludgy fusion of vegetables and sighed. He had no appetite for food, but he would put the effort in for Ilya's sake. The last thing she needed was him wasting away under her watchful eye like some sulking, self-pitying whelp.

But she had done that very thing to herself, letting herself waste away... But he felt sure she had let herself slip away out of neglect, not self-pity. At least now, he knew how she felt. It was as if food was too much of an effort, a stale mass in the mouth that had no taste or texture. An unpleasant inconvenience.

Everything in his life now felt stale and colourless. Everything expect her.

No matter. As long as it didn't affect Ilya, that was all that mattered to him now. As if on cue, Ilya stirred with another sultry groan in her sleep, rolling her head away and exposing the fine details of her neck and collarbone, which were oddly alluring.

God damn it, Ilya.

Danse grizzled to himself. How was he to resist his lust for her when she went and did things like that? Still grizzling, fully knowing how ridiculous he was being though ceasing to care, he took his coffee and midnight snack over to the weapons workbench.

And there he stood. Staring down at his pristine and kempt laser rifle. Void of anything further to occupy himself with. Swamped by the unbearable weight of his own mind and its jungle of entropy. Perhaps he could make a start on repairing his armour kit...

So Danse sidestepped to the armour workbench, dragging out his splintered and charred Brotherhood-issue polymer combat armour. During his AWOL run from the Glowing Sea to the bunker, raiders had riddled the chestplate with bullets, Gunners had left laser scoring on various plates as their parting gifts, and the yao guai had left remnants of its bite on the left forearm. By his standards, the armour kit in whole was insufficient for field use and would require a great deal of repair. Under normal circumstances, he would just turf it for the scribes to make whatever use of it that they could and issue himself a new set, but in current circumstances, it was an outstanding opportunity for a distraction. Specifically one that wasn't excessive exercise, sleep, or Ilya.

Without the necessary materials for a proper reparation, Danse did what he could with what he had, but he refrained from starting on welding or soldering to prevent from waking Ilya. For now, he focused on the areas of the armour where the material had literally cracked apart under the weight of significant impacts. All he could really do was band them together as tightly as he could with cable wire wrapped in pliable leather and secured around the gauntlets and greaves. By the time he was done with that, two things occurred to him. One: he realised his armour was beginning to resemble raider armour, which irked him on a simply aesthetic level. And two: he realised he had forgotten his soup and coffee.

But before he could make it back over to the fire to reheat his meal, a soft and puppyish yip resounded from near the entrance of the bunker, where Dogmeat preferred to sleep on guard duty, despite Ilya's attempts to coax him to sleep near her for his warmth and company.

Lifting a curious brow, Danse changed his course and moved closer to the source of the yips. Dogmeat lay on the spare sleeping bag Ilya had traded for, his legs twitching amid the yips that puffed from his ribcage. The yips were interspersed with quiet, pleading whines, then his legs began to paddle as if running the air, chasing something in his dreams, or running from something...

Danse stood aimlessly and frowned in sudden concern. Knight Captain Cade had diagnosed the dog with a milder form of PTSD—acute stress disorder—after his death from the cave-in and his symptoms of trauma. When Ilya first told him, at first Danse had thought it ridiculous that a dog could develop something like that. But then he remembered one of the patrol dogs in the Brotherhood having to be retired due to chronic episodes of anxious behaviour whenever the sound of gunfire rang through the air. Its trainer had been shot and killed on patrol, and the dog had never recovered from its grief.

Dogmeat continued to paddle in his nightmares, puppy barks subsiding into whimpers, and Danse felt an empathetic streak for the dog, accompanied by an overwhelming urge to protect him. With hesitant care, the man stepped into a kneel and placed his hand to Dogmeat's golden mane. At once, the canine thrust awake with a loud yelp and craned his neck back to look upon his assailant. As soon as his wild eyes connected with the familiarity and safety known in Danse's eyes, he immediately settled, though whimpered sadly for attention and a soothing presence.

He's just like me, Danse thought as he ran his hand through Dogmeat's fur. "It's alright, boy," Danse soothed with more affection that he realised he had for the canine. He continued to sweep through the coarse fur in reassuring motions, scrunching it up behind the ears where the dog displayed a particular liking for it when Ilya petted him. "You have bad dreams too, do you? I know how you feel." Dogmeat just peered up at him through large, gleaming eyes, listening attentively while his breathing eased off. "Like your life is stuck on repeat, from how it all begins, to how it all ends, over and over, remembering every single detail. You know how everything goes, how it's all going to happen, but you still feel the same emotions as if it's the first time, no matter how much you try to prepare yourself for it... I can't imagine what it feels like to be buried alive and crushed to death." Danse gazed deeper into the pair of eyes gazing back and found himself trying to dive in, trying to determine how alike they were in this shared torture. Instead, he found his own reflection in the black pupils, a hollowed-out machine wearing a man's face.

He afforded Dogmeat an extra scratch behind the ears, and Dogmeat leaned into it, still watching and listening as Danse spoke in mellow tones. "I killed my friend," he said to his reflection, wondering why he was even bothering, "or at least my memories tell me I did."

Predictably, his words triggered flashes of those memories, sapping away his breath and goading his pulse. He prepped himself to counter it, but a warm and unpleasantly raspy tongue on his arm strayed his focus. With his focus went the anxiety. Peculiar... Danse blinked at Dogmeat and gave a small sigh of appreciation. "Now I am punished for it, whether my eyes are closed or not... and unlike you, Dogmeat, I deserve it. Because now I don't know if what I did was right or not. I tried telling myself that it was the right decision, that I ended his suffering, and that I could move on by hating the super mutants with every ounce of myself and avenging him with every one I felled." A shrug stalled his train of ramblings. Dogmeat blinked at him curiously. "But that was a lie. Just like my entire life. I don't even know if I'm the same Danse that killed Cutler. The same Danse that saved Arthur back in the D.C ruins. The same Danse that nearly got his entire squad killed on recon. Or the same Danse that met Ilya outside the police station... I just don't know what's real anymore..."

"You're real."

Danse shed a layer of skin and twisted to Ilya leaning against their crates of supplies. Her eyes were blue globes harbouring oceans of sorrow. Yet beneath those oceans, there was a seabed of belief upon layers of mantle. How could she believe so blindly?

When Danse gave no response, not even to ask how long she had been listening, Ilya unfolded her limbs from the shadows and approached. "You're real, here and now, and that's all that matters." She settled into a kneel beside him and reached to smooth a palm across Dogmeat's fur in unison.

Danse observed in wonder at her utter conviction, then slid his eyes back to Dogmeat, unseeing. It wasn't all that mattered. It wasn't enough. How could his existence not bother her? How could all these floating questions and tantalising gaps in his identity not bother her?

He diverted. "Dogmeat seemed to be having a nightmare... I came to investigate. I wasn't aware that his condition was still so prevalent."

Ilya chewed on his topic-diverting tactic for a moment before answering. "He has nightmares some nights, still. But he's getting better with loud rumbling sounds."

"I'm pleased to hear that," Danse said, devoid of anything else to say. He was genuinely pleased to hear that, though. Somehow, it felt even more cruel that an animal should experience such trauma, compared to a human, or in his case, a malfunctioning machine. An animal was unable to comprehend what was happening and why it was experiencing these horrors. This was a case where ignorance was not bliss.

Lapping up the attention from his pack leaders, Dogmeat decided now was a great time to subtly roll and present his stomach for sympathy petting. Both Danse and Ilya chuckled softly and took the hint, scratching at his belly.

"Couldn't sleep?" Ilya kept her eyes on Dogmeat. Perhaps to keep the question casual for his benefit.

"No," was all he managed, paired with a shake of the head. He felt he should elaborate to prevent himself sounding blunt, but there just wasn't anything else to add. Ilya just nodded quietly and continued to pet Dogmeat. She didn't appear offended. Danse also noticed just now that she was clad in only her undergarments, her white hoodie tied about her waist to conserve some modesty. He himself had long since formed the habit of sleeping in his clothing when off base in pre-preparation for pre-emptive enemy attack. It was a habit that a military life had drilled into him.

Obviously sensing that the words weren't with him tonight, Ilya gave Dogmeat's belly a final, sportive slap, and raised herself back up. "No doubt I won't be able to get back to sleep, so if you need anything, you know where I'll be." With that, she squeezed softly on his shoulder, and took her leave upon padding bare feet.

While Danse felt grateful she refrained from pushing anything and gave him space, he mourned her presence all the same. And suddenly, the dark cloud glided back overhead and he physically felt his core weighed down, lethargy setting deep into his bones, and the will for anything but sleep drifting away. He loathed this feeling. This drag of despair that immobilized him and rendered him an unproductive waste of air and space.

Under that cloud, time was irrelevant. Danse didn't know how long he knelt there on the ground, absently stroking the dog, who had long since fallen back to sleep. No substantial thoughts had even graced his mind. He had simply just knelt in empty numbness. It felt liberating and lonely simultaneously.

It was times like these where simply existing was painful and exhausting beyond measure.

Eventually, the aching in his joints and muscles distracted him from his hollow meditation. Knees cracking, Danse stood, grimaced, and lumbered back to the homely cluster of furniture and supplies he and Ilya were calling home for the time being. While he had been destitute, Ilya seemed to have taken the time to apply a soft illumination to their space, lighting several candles and setting up an oil lantern. In the warm, golden effect, Danse felt a small edge of his misery lifted.

His soup and coffee caught his eye... Hungry, but eating was too exhausting.

His armour set lay scattered on the workbench, calling him to finish his repairs so that he could get onto welding and soldering tomorrow... The thought of labouring made him want to shoot himself. Not the best train of thought at the present moment.

His sleeping bag beckoned him... Cold. Dark. Lonely. Misery.

His eyes drifted to Ilya curled up in her sleeping bag and tinkering on her Pip-Boy, on the opposite wall, far from his reach. Because he told her to move away. Was pushing her away. And she was keeping her distance from him because of it. He wanted her to, but didn't want her to. He was an incomprehensible mess.

Feeling angry and pathetic for sulking, Danse refrained from sighing and wandered over to his sleeping bag, dumping himself down above the covers. The ceiling overhead offered a bland source of prosaic marks and imperfections to count and study, and god damn it, even that was painful and exhausting. Was there no way to escape himself?!

Just when he was about to shove himself back on his feet and begin pacing in the cage of his mind, Ilya stirred from her Pip-Boy and rolled his way. She said nothing, she just stared at him, studied him, considered him. Her face was bare of any emotion. No curiosity. No worry. No pity. Just... knowing.

Danse didn't know what she discovered in him, but whatever it was, it compelled her to roll out of her covers, pick them up, carry them over to him, spread them and then crawl back within. What was she doing? She shouldn't be so close while he slept, even with the metre distance she had left between them, he was too dangerous. By steel, her face when he had snapped to consciousness to find his own fingers wrapping her fragile throat, his own thumbs digging in to block her air. She had been dying. _Dying._ By his hand. He didn't want that to happen again. It couldn't. It wouldn't.

But Ilya just lay there, watching the ceiling with him. He considered saying something. Anything. But just like before, nothing came.

Then, her hand moved out from her covers and reached across the cement distance between them, fingers slightly calloused but slim and delicate. Some impulse in Danse brought his own hand up to touch hers, skin melding, fingers linking. At once, he felt secure, grounded, oriented, like he had found gravity in his void.

Words finally came to him. "Thank you."

Soon, he was dreaming. Not of Cutler. Of her.

* * *

 **A/N:** Just a character-driven filler chapter to get inside Danse's head and flesh out his perspective on all this.


	49. Idiot Savant

**Idiot Savant**

* * *

The wind was fresh in his face, cool in his airways and sweet to his senses. Not like it was out in the Blood Lands, hot and dry in the day, cold and sharp in the night.

Be like the wind. Fast and agile and silent and...

No... no, the wind didn't kill things. Not like how he was trying to kill things.

Be like... a gun? Fast and loud and strong... Well, it was the bullet that was fast and strong, but the gun was loud. So he needed to be fast, agile, silent, loud, and strong...

Be like... The Whisper! Be fast and agile and silent, but loud and strong, like... The Dancer!

Yes. Yes! Be like Whisper and Dancer!

Clay-Crawler stalked his prey, prowling through the dry, reedy grasses to get nearer. His prey was a creature he had never encountered before, a big four-legged mammal with two heads, each with long, gnarly horns. He wanted those horns.

The raider had pulled from his reservoir of hunting skills inherited from his Red Claw clan and spent the first day since set loose from the Brotherhood just observing the small herd from afar, gathering knowledge on their movements and behaviours. He knew that they were extremely perceptive and skittish, knew that they were fast and agile, that they opted to flee when faced with danger, but that the males would fight to defend their females and young when offered no other out. Usually, a hunting pack of Red Claws would target the weakest prey, but Clay-Crawler wanted the horns of the male.

Be like Whisper. Be like Dancer.

He swirled his pilfered machete in his hand to flex his wrist and gain a fresh grasp on its weight and lethality, moving his lithe body through the wilderness on bare, silent feet. The radstag was grazing intermittently, lifting its two heavily ornamented heads to survey the surroundings for hostiles before stooping back to graze. The raider approached from behind, getting every inch as close as he could before he would inevitably be spotted or heard. Agile and silent.

Like Whisper.

One of the females spotted him first, giving a shrill call that alerted the rest of the small herd. Clay-Crawler burst into attack-mode, pushing off with the balls of his feet, unleashing a loud battlecry to intimidate, rearing his machete above his head. Loud and strong.

Like Dancer.

The herd scattered, and the big male's eyes rolled back to flare its whites in alarm before they sighted in on the single charging raider. It snorted a gust of rage, braced its mighty rack forward, and pawed the dirt with its hoof, returning the intimidation factor.

Hollering with wild bloodlust, Clay-Crawler accepted the challenge and came in range to swipe his machete for the radstag's jugular, but the creature swiped back with twice the strength and speed, its barbed rack connecting across the raider's vulnerable ribs and lifting him off his feet. Clay-Crawler flailed for a good distance before plummeting through the dirt and rolling to a defeat. Grime was in his mouth, clinging to his tongue, and he spat and licked his palms desperately to rid himself of the taste and grit.

With a smug snort of air, the alpha radstag declared the raider a failure, before galloping after his herd. Clay-Crawler mimicked the snort in annoyance and scrambled back to his feet.

"Not over!" he called after it, fist pumping the air. "Will come back for you, Horny! Cut off horns, take as trophy! Sleep with eye open, Horny!"

* * *

The next day, the young raider was on an all-important mission: to feed his bloodlust, to bring the sacred blood of his slain back to his blood-bond mate to renew their bond, to take the trophy as declaration of his hunting prowess, but most important of all, to regain his dignity by taking his vengeance on Horny.

The alpha radstag grazed on the outskirts of his herd once again, so smug, so horned. What did he ever do to deserve such giant horns? Did the ancient spirit people favour him? Maybe if Clay-Crawler killed him, he would inherit that favour... Maybe he would grow giant horns, too!

Whisper and Dancer would be so proud of him! But what if Boss-Man really had eaten them? They couldn't be proud of him if they were in Boss-Man's belly... He shook his head. He had to find them. Once he replenished his need for blood, he would search for them until his feet bled. What if they were in trouble? He would save them! They would be _so so_ proud of him! Maybe Dancer would even want to be his blood-mate, too. To be bonded to such a mighty warrior would raise his favour with the spirit people even more!

Incensed by these possibilities, the hungry raider approached Horny once again, moving against the wind to cover his scent from being picked up by the sensitive noses of the herd. None had spotted him so far, even those on lookout. Like Whisper. Like Whisper.

When at last he had pushed his luck as far as it would go and a lookout spotted him, he raised his machete above his head, wailed his inane battlecry, and launched in headfirst. There was a commotion of hooves and a scattering of dust, then Horny came for him, shrieking his rage and sweeping his giant rack.

Clay-Crawler learned from last time, tucking his lean body away from the sweep of the horns and then darting back to prick in with the tip of his machete, catching the Horny's hind leg. The creature bawled and stumbled, giving the raider ample time to lurch for a handhold of the horns before it could regain its momentum.

Just like that, Clay-Crawler found himself atop the bucking creature, clinging onto the horns for dear life, the abrupt end of Horny's swiping motion causing the raider's head to snap back. But his fingers possessed the wiry strength of many years in slave labour.

Panicked by the rodeo raider, Horny bellowed and shook himself violently, tossing around the weight on his rack without mercy. Clay-Crawler's battlecry was demoted to a full-throated scream of not only terror, but utter joy. The exhilaration in his belly was wondrous!

What a wild ride!

He went in for a bite, struggling to sink his teeth into thick flesh, when the radstag resorted to bucking again, a continuous, tumultuous assault of motion that thrashed at the raider, wobbled his grip, and eventually sent him flying through the air all over again in a repeat of yesterday. He crashed to the dirt, scuffled with the dust, and spat the dirt he ate.

Horny snorted loudly and gazed at the downed young man, seeming to gloat, before snorting a final time and trotting away for his herd. Clay-Crawler was livid.

"Horny! Fucker Horny! Fuck you! Fuck, fuck, big fuck you!"

* * *

On the third day of hunting, Clay-Crawler was forced to raid a small settlement for food to keep his energy up. He made his move before the sun broke the horizon in the early dawn, creeping up to get a better look. There was a small, rickety shack in the middle of the open grasslands, flanked on one side by what was left of a pre-war farmhouse, and the other side by some crops that were fenced and guarded by automated turrets. Those turrets looked menacing, but those funny blue fruity things looked so juicy... like eyeballs.

Falling back on his guerrilla tactics when outnumbered and outgunned, the raider found the largest rock he could, and hurled it straight at the sleeping two-headed fat pink thing. The rock smacked it on the rump and the thing mooed like nothing Clay-Crawler had ever heard, before staggering to its feet and hightailing it. The turrets reacted by targeting the rogue brahmin, rounds ripping into its flesh and inducing it to bray loudly in startled pain.

The settlers inside the shack were shouting in alarm, and Clay-Crawler took advantage of the chaos, sprinting right for the crops and leaping the fence fluidly, making use of his lean athleticism.

The settlers streamed out from their shack and immediately spotted the raider, so he darted down for another rock and tossed it at the man bearing his rifle. Whack, right in the eye socket. Good hit! The man cried out and fired off-mark, bullets spraying the nearest turret instead of the thief.

The turret defended itself, adjusting its aim on its attacker.

The small family just had time to pull the man back inside the shack before it was assaulted with a rapid volley of metal, easily shredding the metallic structure.

Feeling only a little bad, Clay-Crawler shrugged and continued snatching as many mutfruits as he could shove into his harness pants, briefly wishing the Brotherhood hadn't stripped him of the uniform they gave him before setting him loose. When his pants were bulging and overencumbered, he took a second to admire the way it made his manhood look mighty, like The Dancer's must be, then winced at how squished it really was in there before beginning his waddle to flee.

Something cracked inside the assaulted shack, one of the settlers gave a feminine scream above the peppering of bullets, and then fire burst to life and licked its way up the shredded walls to reach the wooden roof. The settlers gushed from the door as the turret ceased fire in the loss of its infrared sensors, and the small shack was soon devoured by beautiful fire.

Oops.

Despite his guilt, Clay-Crawler was overcome with honour to be graced with the pleasure of the ancient spirit people in form of fire. They enjoyed his battle!

"Spirits honour me!" he announced to no one, soaking in the fantasised jealously of fellow warrior slaves.

* * *

Clay-Crawler quickly discovered that the funny blue fruity things were not like eyeballs at all. He force-fed himself and gagged several times, nearly choked once, and vomited everything back up once he was finished.

He screamed in anger at the slush of puke at his feet, declaring it evil and cursing it to the Dark Deep to rot with Doom-Guy. After he was finished, he slurped up the vomit, and pinched his nose to keep it down. It still tasted like the blue fruits, like that watered down urine and critter broth that Chop-Guy made for the slaves when they were low on meat.

He waited an hour for his food to settle and for the sun to mount the sky, then picked up the trail of the radstag herd. It didn't take him long to track them. Horny was leading them further and further north, grazing intermittently as they went and leaving a strewn path for him to follow. But Clay-Crawler felt anxiety crawling up his gut the closer they got to the roads. People walked the roads. He felt much more at home in the wilds with the animals than he did on the roads with people.

This time, Horny was the lookout, and his eyes were keen. He immediately honed in on Clay-Crawler's movement through the grasses, and stayed his eye on that spot with an unblinking intensity. The raider froze. No warning call erupted from the radstag, so maybe he hadn't spotted him yet, but Clay-Crawler knew that one more movement would give him away. He wasn't close enough to make a charge worth any chance.

The staredown ensued.

Big fuck you, Horny.

The muscles of his legs and his Achilles tendons began to gripe from their slave labour of holding their posture without shifting weight, and Clay-Crawler felt pearls of sweat pop up from his pores as the day gathered heat. As they began to slither down his bare skin, it tickled, especially the one running down his nose. He wiggled his nose, but the pearl of sweat only ran down the groove in his nostril and collected near the opening. That tickled even more, making his right eye twitch as a nerve was pestered. So he sniffed up the pearl of sweat, feeling it shoot up his nostril. Where it tickled the canal deeper inside his nostril.

Not the sneezes!

He could feel it building up its power, cajoling the sensitive nerves up there to contract and let rip. Both his eyes were twitching now, his pupils straying cross-eyed, his vision blurring. He mashed his lips tightly and scrunched his features to hold it in, but it felt like his brain was going to explode!

Sneezes!

It was loud. Violent. Explosive. Horny bawled and ignited a panicked chain reaction in his harem of wives, sending them speeding off to safety while he faced the offender, bearing his horned rack to tease Clay-Crawler of what he couldn't have. With the raider being too far away to deal any damage to his herd, Horny decided he was of little threat, and snubbed him, turning sharply on his prissy hooves to trot away.

Slumping in defeat, Clay-Crawler heaved a sigh and felt tears well up. Hunters and warriors did not cry. But he was neither. He was a useless, worthless slave boy who had been chosen as a toy by Slay because he was smaller and prettier than the rest, not strong and manly.

Was he a girl?

Damming up the swell of his tears, he pulled at the waistband of his pants to check he wasn't a girl, even checked underneath the length of his manhood and then the two dangly sacks in case girl petals were hiding beneath, then sighed in avid relief.

Just a girly boy.

He was just about to release the dam on his first sob when movement caught his eye. It darted and ducked, weaved and bobbed. The grasses concealed its true identity, but Clay-Crawler saw the telltale giveaway of what it might be.

Horns.

It was small, much smaller than Horny, but those horns were just as mighty. The shape moved in swift loping motions toward a cluster of dry vegetation, rounding to disappear behind them. That was when it stuck its head out again, like a spy checking its tail. It was just like Horny! But with only one head, not two! He might have a chance to hunt this one!

So Clay-Crawler sucked back his tears and stalked after the radstag, holding his machete with a determined grip. Upon reaching the bushes, he discovered that the radstag was no longer there. It was further ahead now, closer to that collapsed bridge in the distance, sticking its head out from behind more bushes for him to see. Clay-Crawler followed.

It wasn't until the raider reached the next cluster of bushes that he realised the radstag had now reached the bridge, and was sticking its head out from behind rubble again, as if waiting for him to see and follow. He didn't like the idea of moving closer to human civilisation, there was another settlement just across the brook, but he would risk it to prove he was a man and not a girly boy! He still had the chance to make Whisper and Dancer proud!

He picked up his pace, frowning with steadfast grit, and reached the rubble of the bridge. Ducking under what was left of the bridge's structure, he readied his machete for the killing blow, only to find no target. Confused, he peered down in the ditch below where the narrow stream trickled its way over rocks. This was the only way the radstag could have gone, but there were no hoof tracks in the mud. He scratched at his shaved head.

"Gotcha."

That sly, smug, humoured voice. Clay-Crawler knew it and whipped around to face the man he considered a big brother. "D-Con!" He almost recoiled in fright at the sight of the man. Covering his face was a mock mask of an animal, very similar to Horny, and with horns just like Horny. He wore brown leathers that hung loosely from his lean form, concealing every hint of human flesh to complete the disguise. He was laughing quietly as Clay-Crawler gawked in wonder.

"The look on your face is priceless, you totally fell for it," D-Con squeezed out from his chuckling lungs before stepping closer and clapping the raider firmly on the shoulder. "Buddy! Good to see you still alive and kicking! Well, I've been watching out for you since yesterday, just to make sure the Brotherhood weren't spying on you in hopes you'd lead them to Ili, but I gotta admit, it was pretty entertaining watching you try to hunt those radstags." Another chuckle. "I thought I'd make our reunion a thing to remember. Pretty good, huh?" With arms proudly akimbo, he turned about to model his disguise, even stretching down into a lunge to flex and pose. "Every bit my own craftsmanship, even the mask... okay so the mask was borrowed, but everything else is true organic Deacon handmade."

Clay-Crawler blinked, then ogled the horns adorning the mask. "Real horns? Borrow mask from who?"

Straightening, D-Con slipped off the mask, gracing Clay-Crawler with a wide grin decorated by his staple sunglasses. The raider had time to wonder how he had managed to wear the shades beneath the mask before D-Con responded. "Nah, horns are fake. I, uh, _borrowed_ it from a gang calling themselves The Pack, out in a place called Nuka-World. Ili let me tag along with her one time when she had business out there. _Real_ fun place, full of _real_ fun people... You'd like it there."

Something in D-Con's tone told Clay-Crawler that he was being falsely innocent in sarcasm. "Bad place? Whisper gone there with Dancer?"

"Yeah. Bad place. Long story short, Ilya played them all into her dirty little paws, got them right where she wanted them, then stabbed them all in the back, went on a power-armoured killing spree with Danse, and shut the entire place down. Good times. Is she there now? Doubt it. I was actually hoping you knew where she was. No ideas?"

Ideas? Clay-Crawler had ideas, oh yes. And they were swelling from his mind and terrifying him. Biting at his fingernails, he paced and fidgeted. "Think Boss-Man ate Whisper and Dancer..."

There was a length of silence from D-Con, then a snort that evolved into more chuckles. "I have a hunch Maxson wants to eat Ilya, but not in the way you're thinking..."

Clay-Crawler didn't catch onto whatever D-Con was hinting at, and blinked repetitively under a bewildered frown.

D-Con snuffed his humour and cleared his throat, donning a sudden grave air. "Look, buddy, we need to find Ilya and Danse. Urgently. I spent some time sussing the hot gossip at the airport before finding you, and things are getting real over there. The Brotherhood are mobilizing, Mad Max is stomping around like a deathclaw on the rag, and the Minutemen are going bananas, saying Danse is a synth and Ilya killed him and betrayed them, leaving them out to dry with Maxson. Do you know anything about this? Do you have any idea, any idea at all, where they'd be?"

The young raider drew in his breath sharply. He didn't know what a synth was, but he knew one thing for certain. "Whisper... Whisper never kill Dancer! Never! Whisper likes Dancer! Soft eyes for Dancer! Wants fucks with Dancer! Not kill Dancer! Never!"

His angered outburst seemed to take D-Con by surprise, as alarmed creases rose in his forehead above his glasses, and his hands lifted to placate him. "Alright, alright, hey, didn't mean to upset you, pal. I just had to ask, alright? But listen, we gotta find them. I don't know what the heck's going on, but they could be in trouble, and it's up to us to help them out. But we have to be discreet about it. That means no running through the Wastes shouting at the top of your lungs for them, or telling anyone that you're looking for them. If the Brotherhood are out for blood, we don't want to attract their attention. You got me?"

"Yes," Clay-Crawler nodded enthusiastically, eyes wide with purpose. "No shouting. No asking or telling."

"Good," D-Con nodded, satisfied. He studied the mask in his hand for a second, shrugged his bottom lip, then offered it up to Clay-Crawler. "You want it? I'm kinda bored of it now."

"Want real horns. For trophy."

So D-Con shrugged entirely and just plopped the mask to the dirt. "Alrighty." He tore off the makeshift leather shawl and baggy trousers that had served as his radstag disguise, and stepped out of them wearing simple road leathers that actually fitted his form. The leather bundle, he stuffed into his travelling pack. Even Clay-Crawler knew not to toss cured and tanned leather, as it was a precious resource when living off the land.

D-Con looked up to the raider and gave him a snappy nod and a fond slap on the shoulder. "Ante up then, pal. Let's go find mommy and daddy."

* * *

 **A/N:** I hope everyone who celebrates it had a merry Christmas, and a great New Years! I wanted to upload before Christmas but just couldn't get my shit together, sorry! Life has been a rush and world events get to me at times, but your active support has kept me motivated, so even if I don't feel like writing for myself, I will for you guys. So thank you for keeping this alive for me :)


	50. Alive

**Alive**

* * *

 _"You are alive."_

 _Danse was back home, the Capital Wasteland. With her._

 _It was beautiful. She was beautiful. Both ruinous ghosts of their pasts, both dark and dangerous, but both beautiful if he rummaged through the ruins; if he looked deeper._

 _Both home. Both alive._

 _Ilya took his hand, smiled, gave him gravity with her deep sapphires, and guided him through the ruins, of his world, of her soul. Shadows of the forgotten befell their wake—ghosts of the city, ghosts of the world, ghosts of the past. The sobs of the mourning, the cries of the pained, the whimpers of the lost, the chuckles of the children innocent to it all. The world, her soul; both cried as they fell to fire nurtured to fruition by chaos._

 _All around them, his brothers and sisters battled with honour and fury, raiders fought with flame and blood, radiation hunted and punished all, the city bled and fell, the world bled and fell. Whispers, voices, screams, the miasma of chaos surrounded him. But by Ilya's hand, nothing could touch him, he could hold onto that illusive calm in the chaos. He could be the calm._

 _He could go home,_

 _Could take on the world,_

 _Take on his demons._

 _It was back inside him. Visceral, condemning, torturing. In the deep grotto of his memory, it crawled back up to shatter his great fortress and render him its prey once more._

 _Danse drifted through his own distorted memory, tearing up air and land in search of Cutler. Blood and sweat was spilled, sustenance cast aside, emotions threatening to betray him each night he closed his eyes on an unsuccessful day. Mornings came with anxious sickness, kept at bay only by the will to push on._

 _The hive._

 _Danse remembered it vividly. Death and gore, red and rage, fury from the blood. The sight terrorised his eyes in sharp, fractured memory, flashes stabbing into his brain like a knife and latching on to etch out the images that would forever haunt him._

 _Human beings, mutilated, severed, dismembered, hung up in gorebags and strewn across the walls, their gore spread in decoration. The filth of it saturated his airways. His every step was over bloody bile, the sound unforgettable._

 _Squelch. Squelch. Squelch._

 _He was stepping on people. He could be stepping on Cutler._

 _Shadows assaulted him and his squad. Heavy footsteps penned them into a tight formation. Mutant laughter boomed off the gory surrounds._

 _Danse roared his battlecry as the hive awakened._

 _Laser and plasma met lead and hate. The super mutants roared with Danse, though their nature was of merry madness against his malicious insanity. He stood with the fortress of his squad, commanding it, melding with its current as one mobile force against a horde of disarray._

 _Where is Cutler? Am I shooting Cutler? Was that him? So many faces, so many voices, all the same, all with lasers and plasma in their brains. Cutler? Cutler!_

 _It was over too soon. By his charge, his fortress reduced the horde to ash and goo before he could give any distinction to the mesh of faces burning his memory. His metal boots left a path of quiet, secluded panic as he walked the battlefield, scouring for his friend among the dead. When his squad reported in waves of negative sightings, he issued them cool acknowledgements under a rattling pool of heat in his core. When time pressed on and he persisted through the hive, his squad began to trail him mournfully, hinting that it was over, his friend was gone, it was over. Gone and over._

 _His cool acknowledgments grew into waves of heat boiling up from his core, twisting into snaps, growls, and scolds. Faces that knew him as their rock of calm in the chaos were looking at a different rock, a falling rock, the final fall to rock bottom._

 _Then, he found him. Cutler. But he wasn't Cutler. He was one of_ them. _Mutated beyond recognition, but for the eyes. Danse would never forget the eyes of his friend, his brother._

 _The mutant peered up from its den of gore, grovelling on its knees, still partially hibernating while the mutation made its final insults and erased every last trace of Cutler in there. It was an abomination._

 _Danse wanted to obey the trained instinct in him to look upon the mutant with disgust, but his face resisted to morph in such a way. Cutler scrambled up into his memories. Memories that were secret and sacred, locked away safe inside his head for only him to remember. Only he knew the true Cutler, the only true friend, true brother, Danse had ever had until Arthur. Only he knew Cutler the man, not Cutler the Brotherhood soldier. Those memories were for him, and him alone. Secret and sacred._

 _So to look upon this... thing, and know that it knew his Cutler, and was defiling everything he was into its own abominable scourge, made the falling rock inside Danse weigh even heavier in its final fall._

 _The eyes of his friend pleaded for death. Then the voice did._

 _"Kill... me."_

 _It shook Danse to his core, yet he stood over the mutant with rifle borne, frozen._

 _"Kill... me."_

 _Danse stared, aim true, yet trapped within the cast of his shock. His brow began to quiver. "Cutler...?"_

 _"KILL... ME!"_

 _Danse overrode the quiver in his brow with a scowl, gripped his rifle harder, reined in his aim for the mutant's forehead... yet he just couldn't pull the trigger, his finger locked in that frozen cast. His aim strayed._

 _"KILL ME!"_

 _Instinct overrode all, and Danse fired. The rock shattered on landing._

With breath exploding out in a bestial cry, Danse lunged awake and fought to dislodge his rifle sights from Cutler's skull, to pull the laser away in time and undo it all. His hands clawed through the air for his rifle grip, for it wasn't in hand. It wasn't even in sight. How could he have lost his rifle? _Never lose your rifle. Remember what you were taught. Without my rifle I am nothing._

 _"KILL ME!"_

Cutler!

Then reality hit him in a ruthless gust. Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare. But it was still inside his head, nipping at his vision, pulling him back in and squeezing his heart with cruel pain like a mutant fist.

Ilya. He needed her.

Grimacing his eyes shut and breathing through gritted teeth, Danse reached out for her hand and awaited that touch of gravity. He loathed himself for reaching out, burdening her, but a scared little voice deep within him called out to her...

 _...help me..._

Danse waited in excruciating vertigo, feeling himself lose grip of his sanity piece by piece, slipping back inside-out, the mutant fist around his heart gripping deeper, encouraging blood to ooze from each splitting crevice. Ilya! His hand reached, waiting, shaking. Empty.

Her gravity never came.

Ilya?

With breath forming into rasping pants, Danse braved cracking his eyes and sent out quick scouting glances across his surroundings. Her sleeping bag was empty, her sidearm was absent from beneath her pillow, even Dogmeat was gone. More panic mounted through his veins like impending doom, and amid the screaming in his head, he racked his crippled brain function for answers. Had he lashed out again in his nightmares and hurt her? Had he tried to strangle her again? Had she decided that enough was enough and finally left him to his fate, like he had told her to, despite himself and his selfish need for her? He wouldn't blame her. After all, he had nearly forced his own tortured fate upon her, demanding she kill him, like Cutler had of him. Was he a monster for killing Cutler? Had he nearly made her into a monster? How could he have ever been so narrow-minded and selfish? He would never forgive himself for trying to force his death into her hands.

Now, she was gone, battling for what was left of the world while battling her own ruins and demons, alone. And so was he.

 _I told her to leave. Pushed her away. For her own good. To keep from burdening her. So why does it hurt so much that she did what I wanted her to do?_

He groaned and bit it down into a growl, straining his jaw on more rapid breaths.

Breathe. Slower. Deeper. Breathe... Ilya...

 _"KILL ME!"_

 _"Danse isn't a man, it's a machine."_

 _...Synth..._

 _"You are not a machine."_

 _...Human..._

 _"Flesh is flesh. Machine is machine."_

 _...Machine..._

 _"I don't care who or what you are, you're still the same man I knew from day one."_

 _...Man..._

 _"Look around you, Danse. Look at the scorched earth, and the bones that litter the Wasteland."_

 _...Scourge..._

 _"You want to know why you're not a machine? Because you've evolved. Machines don't evolve, not on their own, not the way you have."_

 _...Evolved..._

 _"You're a single bomb in an arsenal of thousands preparing to lay waste to what's left of mankind!"_

 _...Weapon..._

 _"Emotions, dreams, Danse. That's life. You are alive."_

 _...Alive..._

 _"You're the physical embodiment of what we hate most."_

 _...Abomination..._

 _"You're more important to me than anything else in this world."_

 _"KILL ME!"_

The push and pull was overwhelming, the void eclipsing him. The pain of his identity, the shame of his blind betrayal to Arthur and the Brotherhood, the despair of his exile, the loss of his life's purpose, the hopelessness of his existence, the guilt of his memories, the anguish of losing _her_... he was lost to it, couldn't control it. Not without her.

With his world slowly narrowing and dimming into a tunnel, Danse's rasping pants contorted to savage heaves for precious air, despite his lungs going into overdrive and flooding him with that air. He bowed down into the pain as it took its cruel hold, like needles seizing his chest, burning and ripping with each heave. Sharp tingles stabbed his extremities, then faded into a chill numbness before they locked up like death rictus. His vision filmed over in a grainy purgatory. The sounds of his dying body fell into a muted distance. It almost became serene.

As a final insult, Arthur's words drifted over the residue of his consciousness, words Danse had given him.

 _"We're all Brotherhood deep down. Perhaps not brothers of the same steel, but steel, nevertheless."_

* * *

A hand...

Hers?

It gripped at the death rictus over his fist, driving away the demons that held him prisoner in his own body. His vision was too possessed to discern the details of the hand, but it was smaller than his own, and skin more tinted from the sun. Every atom in him craved to lift his head and see her face, but every atom in him was possessed, paralysed to the view of the nondescript cement, and his one fist that was straining in it. The hand gained a fiercer grasp on his fist, and with it came the whisper sensation of warmth to fracture his frozen state.

Hers.

"Ilya..." Danse attempted to free her name from his lips, but all he could muster was a numb and mute notion of it. Had his voice slipped through the rapid current of his breathing? Had she heard him? Where had she gone? Why had she come back? Did she know how sorry he was for nearly making her into the murderous monster he was? Sorry for nearly killing her in his nightmares? Did she think him weak for failing to fight his demons without her? Did she think him a burden? Did she despise what he had become, this hollow husk of a man?

He had to make amends for it. "I'm sorry for everything I've put you through, Ilya," he wheezed out from shrivelled lungs, deaf to his own voice but reliant on its vibrations through his chest, hoping she heard his words and believed his repentance. "For nearly condemning you to my fate. For trying to have you kill me, like I killed Cutler. Nearly making you into the monster I am. For being so selfish and cruel. Weak. Hurting you. Being a burden. All of it. Everything. I never meant to become this. I'm sorry for it all."

Another hand slipped to his face, supporting his cheek and the motions of his breath. An iota of pressure eased off his chest, the exorcism of demons and the freedom of sensations. Sounds drifted back to his consciousness.

"Danse, just breathe. You have nothing to apologize for. I'm here, I'm so sorry I left you alone. Just listen to my voice and breathe."

Danse did. He clung to her voice desperately as it flowed through him, afraid of losing its precious essence again, teetering on the edge of his control. Though each breath raked his lungs, her voice serenaded away his woes like the gentle caress of water over sand. As his rigid limbs fell slack and the haste of his pulse diminished, Ilya's hands pulled him from the pit where his demons had him shackled and eased his back against the wall. He could finally see her face as she looked deep into his eyes, and it was such a light in the dark that his own hands moved of their own will to enwreathe her and keep her near, his fear of losing her again like a violent surge he had not been prepared for.

Ilya needed no coercing to stay near. She swept in close to his heaving chest and resumed her hold of him—one hand against his cheek, the other clutching his hand, now able to weave her fingers through his as his fist had ebbed from its strain.

He could _feel_ her now. The sharp prickles that tormented his skin as his senses returned were worth it if he could feel her touch again. But the feeling of something else was unexpected, and degrading to him. Tears. He could feel the heat of tears leaking from his eyes. Was he actually weeping? He couldn't remember the last time he had cried. Not for Krieg. Not even for Cutler. Not for his recon team. These human emotions, they couldn't be real. Machines existed for purposes, so what was the purpose of breaking down like this but to burden Ilya? Was it an Institute ploy against her for turning her back on her son? Were they causing his malfunctions? He was a disgrace, utterly stripped of his integrity, baring it all before her as a broken man, machine, whatever he was.

"Don't fight it, just let go of everything. I'm right here with you, Danse. Just listen to my voice, focus on my heat and touch, and breathe. Breathe. Big, deep breaths. I've got you. Here—" Ilya took his cold, sweaty hand and guided it to her bare chest save for her undergarment, pressing his palm there firmly. He felt her heat and the soothing drum of her heartbeat. "Feel the rhythm of my heart, and my breathing, try to match it. Deep breaths. In... and out. That's it, Danse. Breathe with me."

It was an internal battle to match his most brutal battles in the field, every instinct in him was screaming to hold in the alien sensation of tears, to breathe faster to regain control, that he needed more oxygen in his blood, that he was asphyxiating and his body was perishing, but he knew the logic that defied it, knew the illusion that was his enemy. Danse always knew his enemy. He knew that in reality, his fight-or-flight instincts had triggered an overdrive of adrenaline, but without a tangible escape or enemy, his survival instinct backfired with nowhere to go. It was simple, but infuriatingly complex. It was a paradox. Even still, knowing his enemy had not been enough to vanquish it, not without her at his side, guarding his blindspot.

Ilya spoke in dulcet tones as she echoed her words to him, guiding him through it. They became his mantra back to sanity. Somewhere within the battle, their foreheads had fallen together with a familiar intimacy, eyes closed, breaths fusing into one entity. It felt so natural that Danse only realised now how awash he was with tranquillity.

Everything rushed back to him. He had just done the very thing he had been striving against; letting himself be reduced to rock bottom before Ilya. Becoming the burden to drag her down with him. Shame overrode him, and he suddenly became acutely aware of Ilya's warm and barely clad body pressed into him, his palm still planted on her chest above the subtle rise and fall of her breasts, her skin like heated silk, her hot breath dusting over his lips. He was still clutching her waist like an anchor. He shouldn't be.

Arthur's words to her during their standoff dragged over his thoughts. _"That you would entangle yourself with this machine, giving your body to it, even just allowing it to touch you, repulses me."_

Danse pulled on a frown and relinquished his hold of her, slipping his palm away from her chest and out from beneath her hand that kept it there. Her eyes fluttered open into his, concerned, querying, but he withdrew his forehead from the comfort of hers and shifted his gaze away, too ashamed to even meet those intense sapphires that could untangle his core.

He didn't even know what to say. Sorry? Thank you? Where were you? Go away? Don't go? I don't need you? I need you? You're nothing to me? You're my everything?

"Danse..." Ilya breathed sadly, the hand on his cheek shying away.

A cloak of lament descended over him at the pain in her voice. How could he cease to be a burden on her without pushing her away or abandoning her? He would never let her fight the world alone, his only purpose now was to protect her. But he couldn't even do that.

"Talk to me," Ilya tried in a small whisper, tilting her head to catch his gaze.

He dug his gaze deeper into his limp hands in his lap, then stole a glimpse up at her. Her features were tailored in soft concern as she examined him. After a hesitant moment, and with a conscientious effort to prevent his tone sounding accusatory, Danse murmured, "Where did you go?"

A sigh of inward remorse. "I'm so sorry I left you like that. Dogmeat woke me. He won't piss in the bunker since I told him off that one time, so I had to take him up to the surface..." Danse flicked his eyes up to her at the relief shooting through him, that she hadn't left and then changed her mind out of pity for him, that this had all been caused by such an innocent, laughable thing of Dogmeat needing to urinate. Ilya went on in her regret. "But you know how territorial he gets when we set up camp. He wanted to patrol and sniff every little detail and piss on everything in sight..."

Danse almost had the energy to huff in mild amusement. Instead, he eased her regret with a shake of the head. "Don't be sorry, none of this is your fault. I woke to find you gone and I jumped to conclusions. I... thought you had..." he furrowed his brow into a deep, yielding sigh, and braced himself to open a crack in his freshly steeled veneer, "left me..." He loathed how tremulous his voice was upon speaking those pitiful words.

Shock rippled across Ilya's expression, her eyes spread wide, then they fell into orbs of compassion as her hand reached back for his jaw, fingers warm on his clammy skin. Gingerly, she guided his eyes back up to her, and Danse allowed her to, drained of his dignity. Her voice was like a song to him. "I'm never going to leave you. You can push me away and scold me for trying to look after you, but I'm not going anywhere. Remember our promise? We always have each other's backs, no matter what."

That promise had almost become iconic at this point, and its presence filled Danse with yet more shame. A determined crease sliced her brow, framing sharp eyes that held him in her fierce gaze. Fiercely loyal; to a fault. Danse longed to divulge all of his demons, to let her in and introduce the depth of them, but the fear of wholly confronting them weighed heavy on his heart. Fear of going back to that other room of the bunker—of himself—of bending his knee to surrender all hope. He couldn't go back to that place inside him. At the mere thought, fatigue ambushed him from all flanks and he found himself deeply entrenched in a numb reverie.

Ilya sensed his abyssal and just sat with him in it, gazing off at Dogmeat sleeping over by the entrance again, her hand still over his as if to remind him she was still with him. Her patience with him was outstanding to him.

When Danse finally spoke through his mental fatigue, it was with a rueful bearing. "I never should have doubted you. After I met you, my life changed for the better. That's the nature of true friendship. That you chose to remain down here with me after what I've done to you and what I'm putting you through..."

"You're not a burden, Danse. The world shat on you, but you've still soldiered through it like a... soldier. But breaking down doesn't make you weak or any less of a soldier, it makes you brave, human, _alive_ , more alive than people who don't or can't break down. So you don't need to apologize or feel shame for anything. I'm with you through it all. There's nowhere else I'd rather be than here with you."

Her words pierced more of his steel. _She_ pierced his steel. _"You are alive."_ Those words of hers would forever echo over his existence, regardless of his full belief in them. They made him _feel_ alive. He summoned a sigh of bravery. "Thank you for remaining at my side... You're the closest thing I have to family... The sister that I never had."

And now he had ruined it. Ilya's reaction to his words defied his prediction. A shadow of disappointment stole her fierce features. That he had referred to her as a sister? Did that mean that she still possessed romantic feelings toward him, even after knowing of his true identity? But why would she want to be with a machine?

Ilya swiftly tamed her features and absorbed the shift in atmosphere between then, like a cold wind through their divide. That wind had a bite to it that gnawed on Danse's core until it was hollow save for shock. Ilya was clearly lost for words, only collecting herself with a forced smile at his words. He was such an _imbecile_. He didn't know what to think now. Didn't know what he wanted. He wanted her, needed her, knew she was the only purpose for him to live for, but was torn by his identity and the scale of the burden he would be on her. He felt the abyssal wrenching him back into its depths once more.

Ilya detected it without fault. "You need to rest, recover from your episode."

She went to guide him down onto his sleeping bag, but he stopped her. "No."

"Danse?" A frown hovered over her brow.

That impulse that she had awakened in him was taking point here, and Danse knew he was in too deep to flee now. To her frown, he steeled himself. Gradually, he reached his hand for her cheek, the movement so tentative it was as if in slow motion to him. Ilya stared, her frown slipping away into soft comprehension as his fingers brushed the skin of her cheekbone beneath a curtain of short silken hair. Even after their night on the Prydwen, the reality of simply touching her skin was surreal to Danse. It still felt a taboo to his strict moral code, herself a forbidden fruit that he deemed himself unworthy to cherish. The moment stilled and lingered.

Tactical retreat. Flee to the fallback point. Retreat, fallback! Danse did as his self-preservation instincts bid him to and pulled his hand away from Ilya, attempting to regain some scant semblance of his dignity by recasting his harsh veneer that belied his vulnerability. Or idiocy. Why were these situations always so difficult? "I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"

Ilya caught his retreating hand and pulled him back to her cheek, so swiftly he barely had time to resist. But he didn't. With brows soaring high, he watched in stunned fascination as Ilya nestled her cheek against the strength of his hand, closing her eyes momentarily to savour the feeling. Warm emotions curled through Danse's innards, emotions he wasn't familiar with, but found very pleasant.

Her eyes flickered open to him, and her smile thrived with emotion. He was waiting for her to resort to her teasing nature to lighten the mood and call him out on his idiocy, but she didn't. She let them both bask in the afterglow.

Eventually, Danse smiled back at her.

"Talk to me," she whispered again, the sound so gentle it barely grazed his ears.

He nodded and buried his gaze to his free hand on his knee, gathering his thoughts on how to begin. He hadn't realised the time lapse until he felt Ilya nestle her cheek deeper into his hand as a form of affectionate support. He sighed. "I'm sorry. I really thought this would be easier to talk about. There's so much I wanted to say, but I don't know where to start."

She nodded soothingly. "Take it easy, Danse. Whatever it is, I'll help you work through it."

"I don't know if anything will help me work through it," he lamented darkly. "I've spent my entire life... or at least what I perceive as my life... following a plan to shape my own future." His gaze strayed into the bland distance over Ilya's shoulder, introverting. "But since my banishment, I feel lost... almost like I exist without purpose... For the first time since that moment I signed up with the Brotherhood, I don't have all the answers. I don't have a plan. And it scares the hell out of me." Just getting that confession off his chest felt liberating like he never expected it would, though speaking the confession aloud made it all the more real to him.

Ilya nodded like she expected his words—hell, she probably knew him better than he knew himself. "It's impossible to plan your life," she offered gently. "Hell, I didn't expect to wake up 200 years into the future."

"Yet you've been able to roll with every punch that's been thrown at you," Danse countered with awe, her fortitude to bare this new world never ceasing to amaze him. She was a wanderer at heart, free to walk with the winds without the pull of a home or place to belong, content with who she was rather than where she belonged. They were just different in that aspect. He drifted back to his introspection and felt frustration with his disadvantage rise, his hand subconsciously falling away from her cheek. "Don't you understand? Everything I had, everything I knew is gone. In the span of a few hours, my identity was ripped from me and my world turned upside-down." He directed his focus back to her empathic blue gaze. She lost everything too, but... "At least what you had was something tangible... something real. Your husband, your son... they were living, breathing humans who loved you and cared for you." Despite himself, his frustration was gaining on his control and cracking what little composure he had regained. "Those sons of bitches who created me couldn't even be bothered to implant memories of having siblings or parents! I don't even know how much of my own past is artificial and how much is real! Can you even imagine that?" Ilya's brow was furrowed to mirror his pain, but he didn't wait for her soothe him, riding the wave of his pent tension as it cracked his voice with emotion and spilled coarsely off his tongue. "I started out as nothing, and I've ended up as nothing... and I don't know what the hell to do about it!"

Her hands were cradling his face at once, connecting her forehead to his in her healing way, features pinched with empathy. "You are _not_ nothing," she breathed into him. When he could only endure in silence, she stroked his jaw and extended herself. "And you haven't lost everything..."

He had her. He knew that now. "I suppose you're right. Maybe I'm just missing the point," he murmured with a shrug. "My life's starting over, and I need to come to terms with everything I've lost and everything I've gained. Which includes something important you've made me realise..." He ventured on with his next words carefully. "I don't know if it's friendship, or an anomaly in my programming. After all, I'm not really human. But whatever it is, I can't deny that I'm feeling closer to you than anyone else I've ever met." This time, both his hands rose to her cheeks with confident intent until they mirrored each other in their embrace. He witnessed a subtle ripple of gooseflesh across Ilya's skin beneath his hands. Her pupils expanded and her lips parted with a shallow breath before they curled into a timid smile. The sight of a timid Ilya gave Danse a fragment of pride in himself.

"I feel the same way, Danse," she reciprocated with a small nervous chuckle. "I don't know what this is between us, either. If it's right or wrong... We both have so many demons..."

"We can fight them together," he lulled her. "You're the only thing that makes sense to me right now. It's like I'm lost and... you're my gravity." Saying that aloud sounded sentimental and needy... or maybe he had a romantic side that was breaching.

The passion that kindled in her eyes assured him he was on track to mission success. "I... want you."

Had she lingered for a reason, Danse wondered? But the way her voice harnessed that husky passion had him wild with his own passion, yet he proceeded with bewildered caution. "This doesn't make any sense. How could you have feelings for... well, a machine?"

He could sense the exasperation wanting to break free from her sigh. "If you were just a machine, would we even be having this conversation?"

"I don't know. I'm not certain what the Institute embedded into my brain to handle things like this. If I was human, wouldn't this be a hell of a lot easier?"

"You're not a machine, Danse," she countered, her hands a fraction tighter on his jaw to get it into his thick skull. "In fact, you're more human than most people could ever hope to be. And even if it were just straight black and white, human and synth, it doesn't matter, not to me. Look around at the world we live in. Humanity did this. There's nothing special about being a human. As one myself, I represent the fall of the world and everything wrong with it. But I choose to be better than humanity, because humanity doesn't define who I am. Just as being a synth doesn't define who you are. Life isn't about what you are, it's about what you do with what you are."

But there were limitations on what one could do for the world, based on what one was and how the world viewed them. Danse didn't voice his counter, though. Ilya _wanted_ him. That was enough for him for now. "You don't know how much it means to me to hear you say that..." With care, he softly traced the symmetry of her face with his fingertips, and savoured the smile it evoked. Great steel, he couldn't express even to himself how wonderful it was just to touch her like that. "Look... I'm not going to lie to you. You're going to have to be patient with me. Coming to terms with these... well, human feelings is going to be a very difficult journey."

"But if we can tackle those obstacles together, we can battle our demons together," Ilya finished for him, a rogue smile playing on her lips. "And then we can take on the world."

Danse matched her rogue grin, her lips calling to him and making his heart call back. Target acquired. Inbound to engage target... But before he could reach mission success, Ilya halted his un-tactical advance with a finger on his lip.

"Not down here."

"...I only want to kiss you—"

She grinned at his eagerness, and her eyes danced down to his lips in spite of her denial. "I don't want that memory being down here with... everything else."

And he thought _he_ was too sentimental. But Danse nodded. "Then it's worth waiting for." He settled with dropping a tender kiss on her forehead. He lingered a moment longer by pressing his brow into her hairline, closing his eyes upon the reality of her. Ilya sighed peacefully and buried herself into the embrace waiting for her in his chest, mindful of his wounds.

Danse felt alive. For the first time since his exile. As a phantom in his lost void, Ilya had been guiding him to a place where he was torn between thinking himself a man or a machine, in contrast to being convinced he was a machine and his emotions were only an illusion. Whether or not he would ever truly think himself a man, he couldn't know, but being torn between the two distinctions was a gift she had given him that he would forever strive to repay.

Would he still be a burden? Was he unworthy of her? These were things he didn't have the answers to. But she wanted him, needed him, and she was his purpose to keep him alive. It was simple. She was his everything. She was the sunlight to his barren wasteland, the starlight to his dark night, the moonlight when his weather would cloud over; her eyes a fire to what was frozen; her smile a remedy to what was numb; her voice an elegy for what was broken; herself a life to what was phantom.

 _"_ _You can't live like that, Danse, thinking of yourself as this mindless drone fighting at my side without any self-worth."_

Her words haunted him. But for now, it was enough. He could live like this.

Gradually, the two drifted down upon their sleeping bags, and found sleep within one another.


	51. Hope Remains

**Hope Remains**

* * *

The Red Menace was a hushed distance but for the pain in his body. The initiate dragged his swollen and bloodied feet through the ravage of the desert night, one with the shuffle of slaves chained together in single file.

Was there anyone coming for him?

Was there even a single soul out there in this ruined world that would liberate him?

With each day that passed, he waxed deeper into hopelessness. No one was coming for him. Not the Brotherhood. Not the Red Claws. Not even Grace. She had probably already moved on, been courted by some handsome and dashing knight in shining power armour. She always had a little crush on Paladin Danse ever since he headed their research patrol that one time, gabbing on about how inspiring he was, how composed he was under fire, how heroic he was when he had taken a bullet for her. The man was in power armour, taking a bullet hardly counted! Ever since that op, she would always blush fiercely like a school girl when he passed by or trip on her own tongue when he addressed her directly. The initiate never got why, the paladin was as dry as this desert. Maybe that was it? Because he never showed emotion. Women liked that, right? They liked their men to be their rocks.

He would never understand women... Paladin Danse was probably an expert in that field, like he was in every field. He probably had droves of women throwing themselves at him, and he probably lapped them all up like a well established man in his prime should. Despite himself, the initiate couldn't help but admire the man. No wonder he was Elder Maxson's 'pet officer' as the other officers would call him in jealous though good-natured banter. Why he had never risen through the ranks to Sentinel, no one ever knew. Maybe Elder Maxson didn't want to risk the suspicion of favouritism. But it was so obvious. The Elder would always call on Paladin Danse for the most important missions; like his reconnaissance of the Commonwealth, and protecting the Wasteland woman who was the key to the Institute.

Would Paladin Danse come to save him...?

"Don't drag feet, slave!" He caught a wicked slash from the leather whip harassing their line and howled out his agony, feeling the skin across his bare back split. His stumble caused the other slaves chained behind him to lurch forward, but luckily, none lost their balance and fell to the sand. If they did fall, they were subjected to more lashings upon their tally for when they arrived at the outpost. So far, their tally was six.

No, not even Paladin Danse was coming to save him.

The Dark Bloods were in motion, the desert span alive with their migrations and booming war chants. Commonwealth spies had sent word of the Brotherhood of Steel's mobilisation with the Minutemen bolstering their stead, spurring the warlords to prepare their lands for defence and vengeance. Elder Maxson was amassing his wrath. War was afoot.

War. The very word evoked belittling fear in the initiate. No one could escape it, like an encroaching shadow of a nightmare that once set in motion, was unstoppable. Dark, desolated vistas spreading out defeated in the aftermath of mankind's horrid technology; eerie scenes of skeletal remnants and wistful echoes of love and courage, leagues of vengeful, hardened soldiers, trampling the once-fertile soil, all the good in their hearts worn away by loss and rage; while austere, powerful, yet haunted leaders looked on, lost to the weight, drunk on their power. This seemed like the war to end all wars, though the initiate knew it was just another bloody chapter in mankind's struggle for survival. Plans were issued, strategies deploying, manpower gathering, warmachines rolling, guerrilla games were sprawled in waiting. Slay and Dark-Drinker were rage walking.

But so was Elder Maxson.

As with hundreds just like him, the initiate was being relocated to one of the many outlying encampments in Dark Blood territory, a war slave to serve the warriors guarding the borders. Deep in the heart of the desert, away from the shelter of Blood Rock's generous canyons and crevasses, the winds lashed vehemently and the wildlife prowled amok. They had already lost two slaves and one guard. With each hour that passed upon their labour through the Red Menace, more and more of the initiate's hopes were dashed. The storm was mild tonight, yet the radiation poisoning gnawed at his cells with the onset of decay, damping his strength and inducing nausea.

"Can't... walk... much longer," the slave in front of him wheezed. The initiate knew him only as 368-Mole, his serial number and dub. The poor soul had been a slave far longer than he had, and was nearing the edge of his Ghoulification. His hair was gone in mottled patches, and skin had been sloughing off for a few weeks now, revealing raw sores and encrusted scabs.

"Yes you can, Mole," the initiate encouraged quietly to keep the guards from hearing. "One step at a time. We must be close now."

"Can't... too weak. Feel it growing."

Did he mean he could feel himself turning feral? The initiate cast a skimming glance over to the nearest guard out of panic. "You can fight it. You've come this far, don't give up now. Once we reach camp, they'll give you a dose of Rad-Away and it'll be fine. I'll give you my dose, too. I can outlast the rads. Brotherhood training made me more resistant." That was a load of bullshit, but Mole seemed like the settler type and probably wasn't the wiser.

Mole only groaned and trudged on, filling the initiate with relief. Shame accompanied the relief, however. Sure, the slaves quickly formed bonds over shared grief and looked out for each other, but when it really came down to the nitty gritty bone of it, it was every man for himself. If Mole had stumbled and fallen, they would all get lashed for it.

Would he really give Mole his dose of Rad-Away? He hadn't decided yet. He liked to think he wasn't that far gone into survival selfishness just yet, but he knew that one didn't truly know themselves until put into the situation in question. Survival instincts overrode morality when faced with death, even his ingrained Brotherhood morals. He had learned that the hard way out here.

How much longer could he hold onto hope and morality before it abandoned him and let him fall into madness, like that Clay-Crawler, and like so many slaves before him? The Red Menace spread it like an epidemic out here.

Once again, the initiate found himself wondering what had become of that crazy little Clay-Crawler since the Brotherhood extracted him. Third-Degree was still on the warpath to find the name of the squad leader responsible for taking him so Slay could have her revenge. The initiate wouldn't be surprised if it was Paladin Danse. Which was why he wasn't going to breathe a word. He would never betray a brother of steel.

He only hoped his morality would outlast his survival instincts...

* * *

"The trick to being hidden, is not letting _this_ happen."

Bullets skimmed over their rocky cover in the wilderness of the Wastes, raiders keeping a constant shower of fire on them while dishing out their taunts and threats. Clay-Crawler wondered why D-Con liked to avoid battle, as the spy angled him a severe look from over his sunglasses. But battle was glorious!

"They've got us pinned," D-Con went on over the blare of combat, working his nimble fingers to exchange the magazine for his sniper rifle. "I hate being the sitting duck. Pretty soon they'll realise they can flank us." Despite his preference to avoid combat, he seemed to be a level headed warrior. "I'm regretting not bringing along my big ass railway rifle, 'cause I figured I could just ghost my way across the 'Wealth in stealth mode. Didn't count on bumping into you, though, did I..."

His words sounded very tart, so the young raider opted to stay quiet and bit his lip innocently.

"You know, you remind me of Glory."

"Glory?" He liked the name.

"A fellow field agent. She has better hair than you though... if you had hair, that is."

Bullets were still flying, but Clay-Crawler wanted to know more about this Glory. He liked strong women. "Did the fucks with Glory?"

D-Con looked stricken before smacking home his fresh magazine. "Wha? Ha! Not a chance in hell. She'd floor me with her minigun if I tried anything. Besides, I don't do that. Not anymore."

"Don't do fucks?"

"Don't do attachments." Before Clay-Crawler could exercise his oddly sharp perception to dig deeper, D-Con's shades slipped down again as he gave the raider a studying squint. "You're a perverted little one, aren't you..."

Clay-Crawler only bit his lip again innocently.

A grenade clapped the air nearby and scuffed up an airborne pile of dirt, dropping it upon the both of them. D-Con swore under his breath and shook dust from his wig, then readjusted his glasses. "Okay. Talk-time's over. Clay, you're my bait. Wave your white flag, or stick your hand out, which ever suits you, and call off your raider brethren, would you? Ask to be friends." The raider watched as the man then dug out a bulky box thingy from his pack, flipping up the lid to reveal a large, tempting red button. "I'ma pop a stealth-boy. When I give my signal, which is usually something daringly witty and/or charming, you grab your ass and run with it, yeah?"

Clay-Crawler didn't know why D-Con assumed he had a white flag, what a stealth-boy was, or why he needed to grab his ass in order to run, but he nodded all the same. He stuck his hand out above the cover of the rocks.

"Gah!" D-Con lunged for his hand and yanked it back down, bullets chasing the movement and chipping at the rocks above them. "I didn't mean to _actually_ do it, you loony! You wanna lose your hand?" He gave the raider back his hand and blew out a tense sigh. "Just call for a ceasefire, and ask to join their crew. Maybe even drop a Dark Blood name. They might be new recruits looking for fresh meat. And no, that wasn't literal. I need to teach you the concept of sarcasm it seems."

"Ohhh," the raider understood, nodding wide-eyed at D-Con's exasperated face. "Yes. See now. I make trick. Wait for D-Con signal. Run with ass."

"Now that that's settled... stealth-mode activate." The spy hit the activation on his device, and right before the raider's eyes, vanished into thin air. Clay-Crawler gasped with mouth agape. Magic! Real magic! The ancient spirits honour him again to witness such magic!

"Hey, might wanna close your mouth before you catch a fly..."

The raider gasped again in fright before whispering in hesitant bewilderment, "D-Con is _magic_...?"

"Oh yeah, I'm a fully levelled wizard. Trained in the dark arts of smoke and mirrors, cloak and dagger, and _style_."

"Oooh," Clay-Crawler now awed in reverence. His eyes searched the air around him for any clue to D-Con's whereabouts. There was an odd, spectral shift before him, he suddenly realised; like the air held a subtle fluid gloss that shimmered when dust from overhead bullets fell upon it. He felt a hand slap sportively at his bare shoulder and almost shat himself.

"The wonders of pre-war magic, my friend," D-Con chirped from his invisible field of magic. "Now, go do your raider-psychopath bonding thing and make nice with those guys." With that, the mass of shimmering air was gone.

Clay-Crawler gathered his backbone and his wits, nodded tightly to himself, and prepped his vocals for a loud plea. "We surrender! We surrender! Please! Want friends with raiders!"

It took a few harsh yells for the leader of the raider band to control the dowsing of fire. During that time, all eyes would be centred on either the leader as he attempted to gain order, or the rock that Clay-Crawler cowered behind and the hand he was flailing about in the break of fire, giving D-Con ample opportunity to skulk his way to an appropriate vantage point.

"Surrendering, huh? Good choice!" the leader grated out. "Come on out with your hands in the air, weapons tossed. No bullshit or we'll take your head off."

So Clay-Crawler did just as he was told, accustomed to following orders. Once he was out from behind the splay of rocks, he tossed his machete and the silenced pistol D-Con had lent him, allowing the raiders to see for their benefit. His keen eyes observed his captors while they muttered amongst themselves from their cover in the wilted tree line. They were thicker built than the Dark Bloods out in the Blood Lands, with food more plentiful in these richer lands. Their garbs covered more of their dirty bodies to compensate for the colder climate, and armour pieces were less ornate and more practical. Some had grease smeared across their faces, but none boasted the bold warpaint common among the raiders of his ilk to display rank and heritage. What really stood out to Clay-Crawler was the fact that they all had hair. Lice and heat must be less of a burden out here. How wonderful for them.

No wonder Boss-Man and Dancer had such luscious face hair, he thought distractedly.

"Where's your friend?" the leader questioned sharply, a tall man with road goggles covering the majority of his face. _His_ hair was long and scraggly in a rusty shade.

"Friend?" the younger raider stalled demurely. "Yes. Friends! We be friends?"

"The guy with the shades," the leader pressed with a growl, suspicion thick within it. "We ain't blind. Or stupid. I said no bullshit!" He then addressed the rocks. "Come out, now, and we won't stick your friend here on a pole!"

Clay-Crawler remembered D-Con's advice on dropping a name, licking his lips nervously. "You friends with Dark Bloods? I Dark Blood," he tapped his chest, "was slave. See Red Claw marking on chin? Yes. But played wargames, good gladiator. Given right to be free or be warrior." The latter was untrue. Slay considered him too much of a treasure to allow him to enter the Screaming Craters gladiator battles. He had only passed through his rite of passage for cherub blessing in the slave bets, where he won the footrace to escape the herd of radraptors. The only reason Slay had even allowed him to enter was because she knew how fast he was, on account of his many escape attempts from her private lair.

"Dark Bloods," the leader mused. "Yeh, we know of 'em. They sent a runner to our camp and tried to trick us into joining them. Fed us some bullshit about fair rights and claims to spoils of war so long as we fell under clan rule and underwent some trial. But we ain't like all the other gangs in the Commonwealth, too willing to be sheep and follow the herd. We're wolves! I'm Jag! These are _my_ wolves! Jag's wolves! And we follow no rules! We will rise up and—"

Jag's head was obliterated into a bloody pulp before he could finish his mighty declaration, the sound of nearby sniper fire slicing the air.

"Present for you!" D-Con taunted as a live grenade soared through the air for the tree line of raiders.

That was the signal! As instructed, Clay-Crawler clutched both of his ass cheeks and bolted from the open ground, fleeing the stray rounds as they pinged into the grass in his wake.

WHOMP! The grenade set off a flurry of raw screams and panic at his back while he scampered back down into cover behind the rocks, completely forgetting his tossed weapons.

More sniper offloads rang through the battle, parried by rapid volleys from the raiders in the trade-off. D-Con needed his help! Peering from around the rocks, the raider spotted his surrendered weapons, devising a plan to dart out and retrieve them. It amounted to less of a well-thought plan and more of a fuck-it charge as he made a move and leapt out into the open battleground, belly-flopping amongst the grasses and right next to his machete and pistol.

Bullets immediately hailed on him, though they were only a brief burst before a sniper round called them off upon the headshot of his attacker. Clay-Crawler watched from the ground as the raider's head exploded, then he turned his gaze on the figure of magic D-Con amongst a band of trees, flickering in and out of existence with each shot he fired, always reappearing in a new location. The raiders just couldn't pin him down! He would snipe out a raider, then swing back behind a tree and vanish. The shimmering field would ghost away, then he would pop back out and offload another round. He was so magical! He really was a wizard!

Remembering himself, Clay-Crawler fished around the grasses for his weapons and then ducked back behind cover. His machete was no good, so he opted for D-Con's pistol and gripped it firmly in two hands, pulled back the slide to check it was loaded, and remembered to support the grip with the heel of his hand like D-Con had showed him. It was a funny pistol, much longer than any other he had seen or used. It was longer than his penis!

Another WHOMP of a grenade in the fields drew the young raider's eyes to D-Con's last known position, but all he could see was a dust cloud and shredded mounds of grass blasted from their roots. Where was he? Had the grenade hit him? Frantic, he kept low and rushed to the edge of his rocky cover, eyes wide and peeled. He sighed in relief when he caught a flash of distorted light as the foresight to D-Con's return. The slick spy manoeuvred himself through the debris of grenades and incoming bullets, weaving between the maze of trees to drop a knee and loose a high calibre round through the tree-cover of an unsuspecting raider. The round ripped right through the rotten bark and skulled the raider with ease, and all Clay-Crawler saw from behind the tree on the other side of the small battlefield was a spurt of blood and the body spill to the ground.

D-Con's combat style was simple and practical, not executed with the showy barbarism of the Dark Bloods and their pursuit of eternal, bloody glory, but he was sharp and effective, and magic! Clay-Crawler was in awe.

There was just one remaining raider, crouched low behind his tree, firing loosely to suppress D-Con's magic. Clay-Crawler took his chance to impress and aimed in. His took a calming breath, supported the coming recoil with what muscle he had, and squeezed the trigger, not yanking, like D-Con said. _Fuckety._ His shot went wide, or high, he couldn't tell. It was quiet, too. No loud bang. Was this a girl's gun? A silent penis gun for girls. With a prepping breath, he centred his aim again, watching the raider peek around the tree down his iron sights, but before he could pop off another shot, a great wet burst of blood broke out from the sudden hole in the raider's forehead. His body slumped. Dead. And Clay-Crawler missed his chance to impress. He hadn't even killed _one_ of them!

"You, my friend, are in dire need of some training." D-Con materialised above him wearing a smug grin, and a layer of dirt.

"Penis gun for girls," Clay-Crawler stated in irritation.

"It's called a silencer, numb-nuts." Snatching the penis gun from him, D-Con slotted it in the back of his belt, readjusting his leather pants. "If you don't respect the penis gun, then it won't respect you back, and you'll have performance issues. Remember that." He offered the raider a hand up, then slung his sniper rifle over his shoulder in a smooth, practised motion. "If you're still keen to join our rag-tag crew and eat bullets on a daily basis in the name of love and freedom fighting, then maybe I could talk my people into running you through some basic training... on second thought, letting you in on our movement probably isn't the best idea since we kinda value keeping things on the downlow... Maybe if you're good, like, really good, Danse could be buttered up to give you some basic training... I'm sure he'd warm up to the idea eventually... if he's still alive."

Clay-Crawler silently observed as the con artist of truths and identities revealed a brief crevice through his shield of humour, where a sliver of worry peered out. It was short lived as D-Con then bounced on his heels in readiness to move out. "C'mon. Let's skip before the nasties come to sniff out our leftovers."

It turned out that D-Con hadn't meant for them to actually skip, as Clay-Crawler was quickly corrected after doing so. Regardless, they moved swiftly through the open wilderness in broad daylight, much to D-Con's dismay, and were soon trotting alongside the fence line of a quaint little settlement around a small pre-war public restroom building, flourishing with a crop garden and a manmade pool used to grow what D-Con called tarberries. If they were anything like the blue mutfruits, then Clay-Crawler didn't even want to try them. Though they _did_ look more like eyeballs this time. He wondered if they would taste like eyeballs while D-Con approached a pale Ghoul, his stride smooth and cordial.

"Hi there," the man initiated while the Ghoul watched him with palpable unease. "Not sure if you recognise me, but I'm a friend of Ilya Harper and the Minutemen. Deacon. I helped rescue you guys from the quarry."

The Ghoul's face came to life in a spritely smile that reached deep into his coal black eyes. "Of course, I remember you. You stayed and talked to us while Ilya dealt with that raider boss. I'm Wiseman. I'm sorry I didn't recognise you right away, there was a lot to process that day..."

"No worries," D-Con allayed with a dismissive wave of his hand. "The shades and everything, I'm used to being unrecognised."

"You have sensitive eyes or something?"

To this, D-Con nodded at once. "I do, yeah. Allergic to sunlight. Makes me turn rabid, almost like a feral. Yeah it's this weird mutation I caught from a molerat bite in one of those vaults. Crazy, I know."

Clay-Crawler was learning that D-Con liked to trick people, most of the time for no other reason than for his own amusement, but the raider still couldn't tell if that story was true or not. Sarcasm was a new concept to him. The Ghoul appeared to buy it, though, his eyes enlarging in a display of sympathy.

"Well, I've never heard of a molerat bite giving someone a mutation like that before, but it must be a... tricky illness to deal with."

D-Con nodded again. "Very tricky. Out west, I made a name for myself in my more wild years. They called me the 'Nightkin.' 'Course, the children like to exaggerate, I didn't _really_ massacre a vault-full of people and steal their stash of stealth-boys. That's just uncivilized."

Wiseman took on a subtle look of hesitant curiosity, like he was afraid to hear more. "Oh? Children tend to have wild imaginations. I wonder where that rumour came from then..."

"Well," D-Con seized his opportunity, "once everyone in the vault was dead, their stash was free for the taking, right? So _technically_ , I didn't steal anything."

The look of utter horror warping the Ghoul's ragged features fascinated Clay-Crawler. How could skin so leathery and torn stretch so much? He had always wondered what it would feel like to touch Ghoul skin. Maybe Hang-Cock would let him touch his skin one day.

A chuckle spilled from D-Con as he rested a gentle hand on the Ghoul's shoulder. "Don't look so worried, those days are well past me now. So long as my glasses don't fall off."

"That's... comforting," Wiseman feigned a smile. "The Minutemen definitely have some interesting people in their ranks."

"Oh I'm not with the Minutemen. Not officially, anyway. I just drop by every now and then to see what's new and browse their stealth-boy stashes." There was a moment of uncomfortable silence that D-Con seemed to enjoy, then he finally cut to the chase. "Anyway, is there somewhere we can talk privately? Just for the sake of security. We're looking for someone, but so are some other, less friendly people."

It took Wiseman a moment to nod, his dark eyes darting along the hill line behind them to check for lurking eavesdroppers. Then he waved them along in his step. "Sure. Let's go inside. We have a supply line with the Minutemen so we can do some trading, too, if you're good for the caps. We, uh, don't have any stealth-boys, though..."

* * *

Awakening feeling well rested seemed foreign to Ilya, like a lost luxury that lingered only in her memory, but she adapted with a smile as she felt the weight of a strong arm draped over her waist and the warm breath sweeping the back of her neck. Danse's body radiated heat against her bare back and sent delicate shivers across her skin each time his chest expanded into her with his breathing. He was still sleeping. She didn't want to move a muscle, wanted to soak up every sensation he induced in her, every sound of his calm breathing, every note of his intimate scent. It drew out desire from her body, but she suppressed it. Things were too raw still, for both of them.

So she just bathed in him, drifting with the rhythm of him, keeping her hand cradled in his, exactly where it had been when they fell asleep, exactly where she wanted it to stay forever.

* * *

The second time Ilya awoke, Danse was humming deeply in his sleep, as if resisting the invasion of his nightmares. His hand was still cradling hers and tucked up against her, but his grasp was a fraction firmer around her. Kissing his hand, she slipped hers out from his and rolled her body toward him as gently as she could, seeing a tiny frown etched into his brow while his eyes undulated beneath closed lids. She wondered what horrors were going on in there, and when he would be ready to tell her the full details of his nightmares, or if he ever would. His confession to Dogmeat revealed the nature of them at least, despite his confession not being meant for her ears. She felt bad for eavesdropping, but Dogmeat's yelp had shaken her awake, and when she had approached to see Danse and hear him murmuring to Dogmeat, she was enthralled, and worried for his wellbeing.

Still, it could be some time before he felt comfortable opening up entirely. He had only just opened up to her last night about his state of mind and his feelings for her, but his nightmares would be on a whole other scale of intimacy. Baby steps.

With notes of deep care, Ilya trailed whispers over Danse's grizzled cheek with her fingertips, slipping over the weathered fine lines and the scattering of battle scars that marked his trials through life. Once again, she found herself wishing to know each little marking on an intimate level, to know what made him the man he was today, not what he was programmed to be. Remembering when she had cleaned the grease off his face back on the Prydwen, and then feigned cleaning his brow when it was already clean, just so she could continue stroking his face, Ilya smiled at the memory of their innocent flirting and brushed her fingers over the hard plane of his heavy brow.

She observed as his features slowly melted away from their tension and fell back into soothed sleep. Her fingers transitioned to his hairline, tenderly combing through his dark mass of hair, only a shade darker than her own. How he managed to have such thick hair while he constantly stuffed it under his compact tactical hood, Ilya would never know.

There was another quiet hum in his chest, but without the tension, more of a pleasant reverberation, then his eyes lazily opened and blinked at her. He hummed again in approval of what he saw.

Ilya unrolled a timid smile. "Hey."

"Hey," Danse rumbled back, voice husky from the last dregs of sleep.

That single word alone stroked Ilya deep inside, and Danse recognised her arousal at once and reacted to it on instinct, his eyes suddenly overcast with lust. Her fingers woven through his hairline fell still, and she felt his fingers on the arm looping her waist subtly fleck the skin at her back in preparation to gather her up.

"Is... this alright?" he asked through the haze, indicating his arm locking her against him.

The fact that he felt the need to ask her permission to keep holding her was slightly endearing, adding to her desire. "Yes," she whispered back, her eyes saying everything else.

Damn it. Both of them were so drenched in lust for each other that taking things slow was going to be an epic challenge. Danse was a man in his prime, regardless of his mental state and code of honour, and she was... well, horny as all fuck for him didn't seem to cover it.

 _One hell of a hot-blooded woman,_ Nate had called her upon his pleasant discovery of her high sex-drive. Coming from the military, the active lifestyle tended to up the sex-drive... and Nate loved it.

Thinking of Nate brought a mournful chill through Ilya, and she dropped her heated gaze from Danse to bury it in her pillow. He sensed her dampened mood and lifted his arm from over her waist, then cautiously moved his hand up and brushed aside the hair from her cheek, still uneasy with their physical intimacy.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just..." she trailed off with uncertainty. What could she say? That she still loved her husband, and probably always would? She didn't want Danse to feel jealous or threatened by the memory of Nate. It could spark any number of doubts in him, and he already had too many doubts burdening him. God, she was still wearing her wedding rings. Yet, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was also in love with Danse. It tantalised the tip of her tongue every time she looked into his eyes. She was so torn and wracked with guilt. Should they even be doing this?

"It's alright," Danse soothed aside the mess in her head as if he knew what was going on in there. His hand was so warm and encompassing around her jawline, even if he was still so tentative to touch her that he was merely hovering on her skin's surface. "I know that we have a lot to deal with between the two of us, but we don't need to sort through it all in one go. We can work through it together, one step at a time." His encouraging smile gave her the dose she needed, and she nodded.

"Together, one step at a time."

Hearing her echo his words, he buried a kiss in her hair, then gently pulled her closer until she grasped at his flannel shirt and snuggled up into his abundant chest. He had no qualms pulling her as close to him as possible, she noted with a content smile. He just seemed to have trouble with the delicate side of intimacy. Which was something she would be more than happy to help him with...

* * *

The third time Ilya awoke, it was to the tender ministrations of Danse's fingers through her hair. Lying in the aftermath of her sleep, she feigned it for a while longer just to feel his touch and the way he played with her hair, smoothing it through his fingers and deftly caressing her scalp. She wondered how long he had been doing that, just lying there awake watching her sleep, at complete ease with his use of time and choosing to spend it with her. Danse could be so compulsively productive that his utter contentment to waste an entire day in bed with her made her love for him swell almost painfully, and she couldn't help opening her eyes. "Hey."

"Hey."

And again, they got hopelessly caught in each other's eyes, gazes deepening. But this time, they both grew knowing grins and simpered at each other.

Danse continued to sift her hair through his fingers, his face thoughtful. "You have very soft hair."

"You have very thick hair."

He puffed out a small chuckle, but chose not to respond. Probably at a loss. He was propped up on an elbow, gazing down on her with adoring eyes, sleep still lingering in his features. Ilya reached a hand up to stroke his furry jaw, which was growing into a thicket and becoming more like Maxson's beard each day. She loved a good thick dusting of facial hair on a man, but a Maxson Mug might be pushing it past her tastes.

Danse somehow decoded her thoughts. "It's becoming a bit scruffy, I know. I should shave it down sometime. I had a pre-war razor that I traded for years ago, but it's back on the Prydwen." She watched him push through the pang and thumbed his cheek softly to comfort him. "My combat knife will do, but it's a difficult technique to master and can get a little... treacherous..."

"So that's how you got those little scars," Ilya teased before shaking her head. "No, I kinda like it."

"You do?" he checked.

"Yeah... It's sexy."

"It is?" One brow lifted, and his voice had dropped this time. He was goading her on, a shade of desire in his eyes again.

"It is."

His eyes flicked down to her lips, either involuntarily or to boldly state his intention, and it flared up a fireball in her abdomen again. "Really?" he taunted on, voice so low it was almost a grumble.

"Really," she murmured just as lowly, feeling her body fall a helpless victim. She knew full well she was encouraging him by playing along, but she found herself ensnared by the way he was looking at her, and that _fucking voice of his_. Damn it, he really wanted to kiss her, but instead of breaking her sentimental wish not to share their— _cough_ —'first' kiss in the bunker himself, he was trying to get _her_ to break it.

The slick devil.

Danse had lowered himself over her subtly until his shadow engulfed her, a hint of mirth in the curve of his lips, but before he could drawl something else to entice her, she tugged on his tuft of facial hair. "Just don't let it grow out to Maxson length, or I'll set it on fire."

He backed off with an impressed chuckle, the sultry mood obliterated. Ilya laughed with him and sat up from her sleeping bag, for the first time in unknown hours. Her muscles were stiff, her stomach growled, her tongue was parched, and she had an inkling of a headache from doing shit-all for way too long, but she wanted nothing more than to lay back down and lose herself in a sleepy delirium with Danse for the rest of eternity.

Why couldn't they just forget about the world for a few more hours? She knew the answer in spite of herself. Because they were both too damned obsessed with being the noble Samaritans. Neither of them were built for the civilian lifestyle. Yet, this calm before the storm was what they had both needed. Too bad she had to wake up to reality and go to war with Maxson.

But Danse was safe. Shaun was safe. Dogmeat, Deacon, Clay, everyone. For now. She just needed to figure out how to keep them safe forever.

"Hungry? I think we still have some soup leftovers... hmm... looks like we're running low on coffee, however," Danse was muttering on while he rummaged through their food crates, and Ilya wasn't above taking her chance to check out his ass in those jeans before she spoke up.

"Feel like going up to the surface?"

He stopped his scavenging to turn a surprised look on her, which then faltered into unease. He hadn't left the bunker since entering it. This would be his first trip back to the surface. Back to reality. Ilya's mind flashed back to her emergence from the Institute back to the reality of the Wasteland, taking in her first breath of real air since finding her son.

Danse needed to go back to reality and take that first breath of real air.

* * *

The elevator doors yawned open to the topside bunker entrance, the rush of air cool, sweet, and ripe with the familiar Wasteland tang. The area was ransacked for supplies and scattered with protectron innards from Danse's rushed passage, just over a week ago. It felt like only yesterday to Ilya. She couldn't imagine how raw it still was for him.

She waited next to him as he just stood rooted in place, quietly observing, processing. She saw the tension shoot into his shoulders immediately, his hands hardening into fists, and could tell by the subtle tilt of his head that his ears were perked for sounds of danger. He didn't move.

Sliding her hand into his, Ilya offered support with her eyes and began working her way out from the elevator, keeping Danse closely in tow. His palm was clammy in hers, but he followed willingly, his eyes sharp and jaw taut whenever she looked back over her shoulder.

Dogmeat grew impatient with their slow progress and bustled past to the freedom of sunlight, his nose diving to the ground the moment his paws hit the gravel. By the time the two moved through the doorway, the canine was frolicking in the grasses up the hill running alongside the semi-submerged bunker, patrolling his territory.

Danse sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, seeming to savour the sensation of fresh air. He squinted into the sunlight and scanned the hillside, tension still riddling his posture and hand palpably itching to reach over his shoulder for his slung rifle, but his other hand remained laced with Ilya's.

She beamed a full smile at him when he grew a smile himself. It was a small hurdle in a journey layered with many more to come, but it was a hurdle cleared. Hope for him surged in her, no longer seeming an unreachable, nebulous thing. But then she watched his gaze pan across to the misted silhouette of the Prydwen in the sky, and the resulting furrow in his forehead. She knew hope would be diluted with hurt on the horizon for a great time yet, and that the journey and those hurdles would be painful to clear.

Doubts of returning to the Prydwen without him shrouded Ilya again. What would it do to him, staying behind while she went to war? Her thoughts flew to his holotags, if she should give them back to him or not. Would it just make things worse to deal with, resurface old wounds? Aggravate _raw_ wounds?

"Thank you."

Ilya was broken from her turmoil by the warm gratitude in Danse's voice and the squeeze of his hand. She looked up into his sincere brown eyes, glazed by the sun.

"For bringing me out here, for everything. Thank you for helping me remember who I am. Without you, I'd be lost."

Her turmoil seemed to melt away hearing those words from him. Maybe he would be alright without her... But a festering worm in the recesses of her mind still refused to melt. Was he still lost, but in denial about it?

But thinking back on the hardships they had battled together since discovering his identity, and then his exile, Ilya realised that to simply be standing out on the surface right now was a massive feat in itself.

"It's time that you returned to the Prydwen," Danse continued, wearing an earnest expression. She had known that was coming...

"I don't want to leave you alone here..."

"I'll be fine, now that I have you..."

Ilya bit her lip on a frown and glanced off, focusing on the sway of nearby grasses and the flash of Dogmeat moving through them. Unsure, she offered Danse a forced smile and then slipped her hand out from his to turn and pace ahead, hugging her elbows as she stared out at the Prydwen. The weight of leadership encased her once more—the weight of the world. "...Just one more day with you. Please."

Danse was silent at her back for a moment, then she heard his boots crackle over the grit as he neared. "One more day," he agreed, and she thought he was disappointed with her, until he grasped at her hand and gently tugged her around toward him. His smile was thriving with mischief, though a tint of nervousness. "But only if I get that kiss."

Slick devil. Ilya smirked at his tenacity. His nervousness made her wonder exactly how seasoned he was in this field of romance; he was a diehard military career creature, after all, and that often left little room for love affairs. Their hot and heavy—and insubordinate—interlude on the Prydwen that night had been spurred on by an overdose of alcohol and rebellious hormones, so it was hard to base his calibre off that... though that had been of a _damned_ high calibre, she remembered vividly.

With hot flutters blooming in her depths for him, Ilya moulded her body closer to Danse's, sliding her hands up to rest on his chest, inviting him to take point. She felt the sharp kick to the rhythm of his heartbeat as he did, conquering his nerves like the valiant paladin he would always be to her, and descended his lips upon hers. She felt herself melt into the heat he kindled within her, his mouth taking hers in a soft, tender grasp, just as his hands were. Just as his everything was. In that one simple moment, she was utterly his.

They both hovered on each other's lips as they divided, eyes closed to bask, holding onto their slice of heaven in hell.

"Mission accomplished," Danse purred against her lips, and she felt his little grin stretch along her lips. When she opened her eyes, his large brown depths were diving deep into hers, enriched with desire, and amusement. Ilya's chuckle was laced with euphoria as she playfully tugged on his thick stubble.

A bark broke their moment. Both caught sight of Dogmeat as he charged after the scent he had caught on the winds. Danse immediately pushed Ilya behind him and reached back for his rifle, but Ilya knew that Dogmeat wasn't pursuing a hostile, his tail was wagging violently, ears too perked, and just the nature of his charge up the hill defied aggression.

"It's not a hostile," she tried to calm Danse.

He wasn't about to let her past his arm. "How do you know?"

"Dog person."

Danse didn't seem relieved by that, so Ilya drew her sidearm just for his sake, and they moved after Dogmeat side-by-side.

Who Ilya saw rubbing at Dogmeat's belly made her lower her pistol with a slack jaw. "D? Clay?"

"Ili!"

"Whisper!"

"Deacon! Clay!"

As she raced ahead in a gush of delight, she could almost hear Danse's thoughts behind her.

 _Oh, hell on earth..._

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks always for the continued support and wonderful words, love you guys! It's nice to see some returning people, too :)


	52. It's a Sin to Tell a Lie

**It's a Sin to Tell a Lie**

* * *

The familiar features veiled behind those damned sunglasses were replaced with a look of sudden fear as Ilya rushed Deacon and pounced a mighty hug on him. He had little hope of escape.

"Oh, no. Don't do it. No no no no. Oh fu!—" he let out as she barrelled at him, before his words were clipped in half by her thrown weight. He almost lost his footing, but managed to catch Ilya _and_ stay upright. "Geez, woman," he wheezed while she just laughed in glee and crushed him in her arms.

"Shut up, you love it! I missed you like crazy, D! How did you find us?"

Deacon gave an atypically embarrassed chuckle when Ilya released him, his cheeks flushed a smidgen. Another one of hers that wasn't used to physical intimacy, she reminded herself with a guiltless grin while he recovered. "Just a little tenacity and luck... but mostly just dumb luck," he confessed with a shrug, then gestured to Clay-Crawler, who was standing offside with one of his creepy-ass grins aimed at her, showing the full range of his broken and decayed teeth. "Not that your pet raider here made it easy for me."

Ilya regarded the young raider with a warm smile, putting aside the question of his escape from the Brotherhood for now. Seeing him again filled her with more relief for his safety than she realised she would feel. The little shit was growing on her. "Hey, Clay."

"Hi, Whisper!" He revved to life at her acknowledgement, as if given permission to interact with her, and came at her only to bow at her feet. "Please? Hug, too?"

She had to snap down on a chuckle. "You don't need to bow or ask permission to hug me, Clay. You're not my slave, and I don't bite." He peered up at her from his stooped bow when she crouched down on her haunches to his level. "You're no one's slave now, remember?"

"So... can hug you?"

This time, Ilya did chuckle. "Yes."

Her chuckle was severed into a stunned gasp when Clay-Crawler engulfed her in his wiry grip and bowled her over into the grass. "Boss-Man not eat you! Not eat Dancer! Was so scared Boss-Man eat you!"

Ilya's chuckle returned while Deacon helped pry the ecstatic raider off her. She was also aware that Danse had taken a defensive step in from behind, despite his hesitance to get involved in the reunion. He really thought Clay-Crawler would hurt her?

"Somehow he got it into his head that Maxson is a cannibal and ate you two," Deacon explained with a peculiar look of innocence. "Not that I did _anything_ at all to encourage it..." He held Clay-Crawler back like some over-excitable dog while Ilya climbed back to her feet, then he aimed his shades at Danse. "By the way, hi Danse. Good to see you weren't indeed on Maxson's menu."

Ilya glanced back over her shoulder, seeing Danse only reciprocate Deacon's greeting with a grim glare.

"Good chat," Deacon nodded in acceptance of the snub and went on. "Honestly, from watching Maxson stalk around the airport while I was in sneak-mode, I wouldn't have put the cannibal thing past him. I know you liked to play with him, Ili, but you've got some ovaries to get him that pissed off. What the hell happened between you three? This bullshit about Danse being a synth and you killing him on Maxson's order? Talk about power-play gone wrong. I thought you guys were in a happy threesome and set to save the world together."

Ilya's glee was sapped away at the reminder of how traumatically the alliance had fallen apart, and specifically, why. She felt Danse's presence shift uncomfortably behind her, and wanted to reach back and take his hand. But that would likely embarrass him in front of Deacon and Clay-Crawler. Feeling like it wasn't her place to reveal the truth, Ilya cast her eyes back to Danse, part questioning, part supportive.

He stood immobile for a moment, glare still fixed on Deacon, laser rifle grasped in tense arms. Then, he said with a dark edge, "It's true."

Tongues were held. Ilya lowered her gaze to the ground at Danse's feet as a way of giving him some shred of privacy to handle whatever emotions this was rekindling in him. She knew from countless personal experiences that when others offered comfort, it tended to break the walls of emotional resilience to an uncontrollable tide; receiving comfort was like receiving permission to be human. She knew Danse would reject that permission in front of anyone but her.

"I'm a synth," Danse announced to the silence in harsh monotone. Ilya lifted her eyes back to read him. He was still holding Deacon in his dark glare, as if challenging him. He suspected Deacon and the Railroad had known... _Had_ they? A fleeting gnarl of betrayal entangled her that they might have kept her in the dark about her most trusted companion, that _Deacon_ might have kept her in the dark. It was then that she noticed how firmly Danse's fingers were wound on his rifle's grip. Her sense of betrayal would be nothing in comparison to his.

Suddenly realising how menacing this situation had become, and the tension she was standing between, Ilya struggled against her own panic and sought to take control. "Let's just talk this out," she said with an allaying tone, then rolled her focus back to Deacon, trying to stay neutral. "Did the Railroad know about him, Deacon?"

Deacon shifted Clay-Crawler behind his shoulder protectively, then kept his hands splayed out where they could clearly be seen to pacify Danse. "If they did, they didn't let me in on it. For what it's worth, you have my word."

Sincere creases sliced across his forehead, but Ilya knew how good a liar he was. She trusted him with her life, knew the past that haunted him, knew he was a good man fighting for a good cause, but he was a spy. It was his profession to shapeshift, psychoanalyse, twist angles, illude and delude, slink and spy until no one knew who or what he was. Hell, the only reason she was so good at shielding her secrets and emotions while plucking both Danse's and Maxson's secrets and emotions—two of the most poker-faced yet perceptive men she had ever met—was because of Deacon's tips and tricks. He was her shadow, her secret weapon of wit in both its definitions, but at the end of the day, Ilya had always known that she may never know the real Deacon. Had his story about his dead synth wife, Barbara, even been true? He could be an Institute spy for all she knew. Maybe even an Enclave remnant.

Her heart was screaming at her that she could trust her friend, but her head was screaming never to trust a spy.

Deacon eavesdropped on her thoughts. "Ilya, I get it. I'm not gonna stand here and be mad that even after everything we've been through together, you still don't 100% trust me. I'm a spy. I get it." His shades rippled with their change in reflection as he angled his gaze over to Danse behind her. "I might be many things, but I'm not a backstabber, Danse. Not when it comes to friends."

"We're not friends," Danse growled.

"Acquaintances, then."

Ilya felt her head churn with emotions and doubts as she stood between her two best allies, maybe the only thing stopping them from opening up a duel in the name of Wasteland justice. Any moment now she was expecting one of them to demand she move and allow it to spark, man to man. But she wasn't going to let this be another Maxson versus Danse.

Not today, boys.

"Come on, this is bullshit," she snapped, serving them both a sample of fury with her eyes. "Put your dicks away. There's a way to settle this without violence."

"Hey now, he started it," Deacon whined, emphasising his surrendered hands. "He's the one with his dick out, not me."

Danse ignored him. "Settle it how?"

"Railroad client records," Ilya provided, giving Deacon a pointed look. "Do you have full clearance?"

There was a pause as Deacon considered her request. "Yeah, but we don't keep records for the clients that want the mind wipes. We cover our tracks and eliminate all traces. So even if Danse was a Railroad synth, he won't be on the records."

Ilya absorbed that, then slumped in dejection and passed Danse an apologetic glance. He remained staunch and suspicious.

"I'm sorry, Danse," Deacon offered solemnly, his demeanour now absent of his trademark comedy. It was eerie on him. It was easy to forget how old he actually was, and the wisdom he hid behind layers of humour and goof. "I wish I had the answers for you. I really do. Desdemona might have been sitting on this, but I doubt it. She would have mentioned something to me when you came to HQ with Ilya to get that courser chip decrypted. She was worried because you were Brotherhood and might report our location, even requested Glory and I assassinate you, but I managed to talk her around out of the risk of alienating Ilya. Des would have mentioned you were a synth then."

Either Deacon was doing what Deacon did best and was lying through his teeth to them, or he really hadn't known that Danse was a synth. Ilya doubted they would ever know the truth. How to get Danse to accept that, she had no idea.

"I know this is gonna be pretty controversial to say, but you're just gonna have to trust me." Both Ilya and Danse hovered with unease, exchanging another glance between them. Deacon went on with cautious persistence after seeing that. "I came here to help you two get out of this mess you've made for yourselves, and here I am. The Railroad want me on-hand because of all the tension the Brotherhood are brewing up right now with this news of an exile and their mobilization out of the Commonwealth, but I'm here, not at HQ. Doesn't that say enough?"

Maybe it was naive, or false hope, or just wishful thinking, but it was enough for Ilya. He was her Deacon. Maybe he was a compulsive liar and an all-around slippery shithead, but she still trusted him with her life, even if it was based only on instinct and fondness. Danse was another story, though. She vividly remembered his words to her one time, down in the quarry.

 _"_ _Trust is a commodity I don't give out lightly."_

Danse wasn't an instinctive man by nature, he was rational to a fault. But Ilya was intuitive to a fault.

"Okay, Deacon. I trust you." Ilya gave Deacon her confirming nod before fully turning to face Danse, and his straining temper. Every lethal plane of his features, both in face and body, spoke of his outright defiance to trust. She knew that the only way to get him to cool off and heel was to embarrass him in front of other males. So she stepped forward and took his hand.

"I know you don't like it," she said under her breath, watching his face fall into unsteady lines of conflict, "but I trust Deacon. Even if he's lying, I know he would never put us in danger on purpose." She waited while Danse shot Deacon a threatening glimpse. "If you want, we can go to the Railroad HQ and confront Desdemona, then check out what's left of the Switchboard. See if there's something in the database that the Railroad didn't purge or the Institute missed."

"There's no time for a detour. You need to get back to the Prydwen."

"When there is time, then," she proffered. "But for now, if you can't trust Deacon, then I just need you to trust me. Deacon's our friend."

It took him a prolonged—and brooding—time of thought, but Danse relented with a taut nod, shouldering his rifle. Ilya breathed in relief.

"No hard feelings, eh?" Deacon chirped as he moved to outstretch a hand toward Danse and shake on their truce.

Danse simply regarded the hand, turned up a sour look at Deacon, then trudged back down the hill toward the bunker.

* * *

Ilya quietly watched from a safe distance as Danse stalked around the bunker gathering travel essentials for her pack and duffel bag, apparently deciding for her that she was leaving for the Prydwen today. She knew that her 'one more day with him' was a lost cause.

He was in a mood.

Clay-Crawler, however, hovered around Danse with a sheepish air, seeking that greeting he still hadn't received. If it was a hug he was going for, then he was shit outta luck. It was clear that Danse was well aware of the young raider on his step at nearly every turn, but was actively ignoring him, donning a dangerous glower. Deacon was smart and was keeping his distance, hovering instead on Ilya, the two of them slouching against the wall near the elevator to the bunker surface.

Deacon folded his arms leisurely and leaned into Ilya, speaking with a quiet, theatrical Australian accent, "...And we watch from a distance as the Danse moves eloquently about his territory, assuming a threatening demeanour to drive off nearby competition and assert his dominance."

"Not funny."

"...We wait in suspense as a young Clay-Crawler grazes nearby, failing to pick up on the signals that the Danse is displaying, oblivious to the danger he's in."

"Deacon... Shut. Up."

Deacon did as he was told, albeit with a self-satisfied grin. After a few moments of petting Dogmeat and watching Danse grump around the bunker, he adopted a more sombre tone—his serious-Deacon one. "How is he doing?"

Ilya sighed. "Not the best... He's doing better now, but I think he's putting on a brave face for the most part." She shook her head to animate her distress. "He's gone through hell, Deacon. Dealing with some things that I don't have the right to tell you about, but it got bad. Nightmares and anxiety attacks, that's all I'll tell you. I've never seen anything like it, not as severe as his. Not even in the pre-war military, and we all saw and dealt with horrors back then."

Deacon only gave an understanding nod, then he stirred her with a gentle nudge with his elbow. "And you?"

She felt her foundations slip a little, and scrambled tirelessly to erect them, swallowing a knot in her throat and glancing off to feign nonchalance. "I'm fine."

"...And the chems?" he inquired gently under his breath.

The mention fired off defensive reflexes in her, but she managed to pin them down. No use getting angry that he was prying, he was doing it because he cared. "Gone. Clean. In the past." _I hope._ A glimmer of that dark silhouette she had seen again outside the bunker haunted her memory for an instant, then the creeping feel of the radiation that seemed to haunt her with it. What the hell _was_ it? A ghost? A demon? Hallucination? She still worried that it was something worse than chem withdrawal, since she wasn't _having_ withdrawals since being flushed with Addictol. She worried it was something so deeply imbedded in her brain that a simple flush with miracle anti-addiction chems wouldn't cure. Most of all, she worried that whatever it was, it would hurt Danse. She had to keep it together.

Ilya kept her mouth moving to cover her wavering dread. "You don't need to worry about me anymore. Cade flushed me, and Maxson scolded me... You might not believe it, but then he covered for me..."

"From Danse?"

She gave a single nod, staring down at her jeans as she pondered. "I never found out why. When I confronted him, he fed me some bullshit about it being his way of apologising for being an ass, but Maxson doesn't apologise easily, and actually _mean_ it. Maybe it was really just for leverage. Or to earn my trust." She frowned distantly, embittered. "That damned man is still a mystery to me. Something in me keeps nagging that there's more to him, some little light in the dark. That boy that Danse once knew and thinks he still knows. But then I feel like whatever was left of that little boy died when Danse became dead to him."

"The big three for predicting people: caps, beliefs, and ego. Get a handle on what's driving someone, and you'll know where you stand." Wise-Deacon was at it again. Ilya had never taken Maxson for a cap-hungry man, but that could be substituted for power-hungry, she realised. Deacon then shifted his weight against the bunker wall, seemingly in anticipation. "I can't wait to meet him one day. You know, officially."

"I have a feeling he wouldn't like you..."

"With my charm? Nawh. He'll warm up to me."

"I'd like to see you try."

"Deal." The growth of Deacon's mischievous grin suddenly frightening Ilya as to what she had just encouraged. "Together, with your seductive persuasion and my witty charm, we'll uncover all his dirty little secrets, exonerate Danse, and then we'll take over the Brotherhood!"

"Shh!" Ilya hissed, chiding him with her glare. "Danse would kill us for even joking about that."

"Wait, Danse is still on team-Maxson?" When Ilya gave no denial, his brows peeked up above the frames of his sunglasses. "Even after he went Mad Max on him?"

To that, Ilya just slanted him her unbroken glare.

"...Oh hell. Brotherhood..." he mused with a small tsk in disappointment. "In Capital Wasteland they really weren't bad, but now..." He heaved a sigh to further stress his disappointment. "That bastard really screwed them up. The Brotherhood used to be the good guys. Well, goodish. To have _that_ level of influence over his soldiers, even someone as headstrong as Danse. Blind loyalty to the bone."

"It's a long story," Ilya returned her glower down at her jeans. "It goes beyond their Brotherhood beliefs. They have a history together. Brotherly bond and all that bro-code shit."

"Ah, yes, that bromance," Deacon nodded with a comic knowing. "Well it can't have been that strong. Maxson broke the bromance off, so..."

"Danse is more human than Maxson."

Her answer drew a wondering stare from Deacon, and he let it stay in place a while as he continued to wonder at her. "Hey," he then coerced her eye, manner gentle and serious-Deacon again. When Ilya looked back up to him, he was peering at her over the top of his glasses, the rarity of his periwinkle blue eyes like a sneak-peek into his soul. "Thank you."

"...For what?"

"For having his back. For choosing him over Maxson. Choosing synths over Brotherhood. For fighting the good fight for the little guys, even when the odds were stacked high against you. Sometimes it can feel like the entire Wasteland is against synths, whether it's Brotherhood, Institute, or just the common folk that are scared of what they don't understand. But you gave them a chance. There's a reason you're the Railroad's secret weapon. From the moment I laid my peepers on you and spied on you across the whole damn 'Wealth, I knew you would be our tip-of-the-spear. The Railroad might actually have a chance to win freedom for synths now with you on our side." He shrugged his lips in a half-smile, almost timid. "And in return, since we couldn't save your son from the Institute as payment, I get to help you win freedom for humans from these raiders. Win win... Even if Des has a stick up her ass about me diverting."

He still thought Shaun was dead, Ilya realised in sharp guilt. She hadn't yet found the time, or ovaries, to tell him that her son was the Director of the Institute, and that she still very much planned to somehow save him from himself.

Could she trust Deacon with this? Again, her gut instinct yelled yes, but her rational mind yelled no.

Still, his sincerity struck her deep, so deep that she couldn't hold his rare, unfiltered eye contact. It was peculiar coming from Deacon. So peculiar that it emphasised the weight his words on a grand scale. It took her a moment to swallow it. "I didn't just do it for synths..."

"You did it for Danse, I know." He dropped a hand on her shoulder. "But the thank-you still stands." When she only accepted his offering with a modest nod and smile, he said, "You've been through hell too, don't forget. Even before all this with Danse. And now you gotta go back to playing empress with Maxson. Not that I condone it, but I get why chems looked so good... Now, tell me the truth, 'cause you know I can spot a liar a mile off. How are you doing?"

This time, Ilya didn't bother to guard her weakness, not from Deacon. It spilled freely from her foundations. "I'm tired, Deacon. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm slowly losing my mind. I'm worried about Danse. I want to kill Maxson. I miss my husband. I want my son back. I want to save the world but I want to set it on fire at the same time..." She scowled into her words and scrunched her fists into her hoodie as she hugged at her own waist. "I want to save everyone that I can, but kill every last fucker in the world with just as much passion. I want to be in it and do my part, but I also just want to run away from it all and be selfish." Then, she let the antagonism recede just as quickly as it frothed up, relaxing her grasp on herself. "But I'm also happy..."

Deacon cocked his head at her quizzically, then waited for her to go on, hand still on her shoulder.

Ilya allowed a smile to tug on her lips as she gazed over at Danse, still brooding as he packed her shit, somehow finding herself fond even of his current temper. "And I know he's happy too..." She bit her lip as her next confession threatened to flow with tears. "I love him, Deacon. I'm not ready to tell him that yet, and I don't think he's ready to hear it yet, but we're together. And we're happy." She let that sink in for Deacon before saying more. Amazingly, he didn't take the opportunity to comment right away.

This wasn't right. Deacon was taking too long to comment. Was he judging her for moving on from Nate? For falling for a Brotherhood soldier? Maybe worried about her continued allegiance to the Railroad, even though Danse was no longer tied to the Brotherhood? Surely he knew she would never betray him and the Railroad, no matter what personal ties she had to the Brotherhood, no matter how much homage she had or potential she saw in the Brotherhood. She would die a martyr of loyalty before betraying him. Fretting, Ilya checked Deacon with a sidelong gaze. He was just staring at her behind his glasses, expression blank of detail.

Finally, a smirk sneaked up on his face. "Well, it took you two blockheads long enough."

Ilya scoffed and jabbed him with her elbow, pushing out a small chortle from him.

"Seriously, though," Deacon recovered, nursing his arm where she jabbed him, "I'm over the moon for you. You guys are good for each other. Perfect, even."

"You're not gonna tell me off for getting emotionally entangled in the field?"

He gave a blasé shrug. "Shit happens. Love happens. Besides, he isn't wound up in any chains of command anymore, so it's not like you have to worry about the morals of hooking up in a military society. Whether or not that barbarian is actually capable of love, well..." that little snipe earned him another jab from Ilya's elbow, and he chortled again. "Just sayin'. But no, really, if anyone can break through that steel heart, it's you. Love trumps even the strongest, right? Just, don't forget about me over here... yeah?"

"Never." Ilya looped an arm around his neck and tugged him in to plant a generous smooch on his cheek, to which he grimaced and whined like a child protesting cooties.

"Ick. Yeah, yeah, get off."

"Missed you," she slipped out before releasing him.

"I... might have missed you too."

The two fell into a comfortable silence as they continued to watch the wildlife documentary going on between Danse and Clay-Crawler—the raider had just offered the paladin a stockpiled carton of Dandy Boy Apples to pack into Ilya's duffel bag, obviously thinking Danse was going with her. The paladin just lifted the raider a salty expression before pushing past him with his shoulder.

"They're so cute together," Deacon cooed.

"The Brotherhood had Clay locked up tight at the airport. How the hell did you manage to break him out? Do I even want to know?"

At Ilya's question, Deacon darted her a confused look. "He was gone by the time I got to the airport. I heard through the great vine that Maxson set him loose, same way I heard about you and Danse. Brotherhood scuttlebutt can be a real popcorn fest... mmh, why haven't we tried to make popcorn from our corn crops yet?"

Ilya bypassed his random musing. "So how did you find him?"

"Ah. Now there's a tale." So Deacon recounted how he tracked the young raider down in hopes he would lead him to her and Danse, instead finding the raider during the night when he had set fire to the shack at Finch Farm, highlighting his location in perfect anarchy. At Ilya's concerned face, Deacon assured her that the settlers escaped unharmed, and that he had radioed in on the Minutemen channel for a scavver team to help in the rebuilding. He then went on about how he found Clay-Crawler hunting a small herd of radstags, and epically failing at it. Ilya found herself having a small giggle at the tragic story of Horny and his great escape, and then Deacon's flamboyant radstag disguise as a way of reuniting with Clay-Crawler.

His voice was dripping with barely contained mirth. "He totally fell for it. I think we have a class-A doofus on our hands, here. You think I should try out my legendary Mr. Handy disguise on him?"

"If those muties didn't fall for your Super Mutant disguise, then I think even Clay would see through your robot disguise," Ilya teased.

"You never know..." The shady spy lapsed into a thoughtful silence, then revved up into his next bout. "I had an idea while Clay and I were on the road..."

"Uh oh."

"Now just hear me out... what do you reckon we try to talk Danse into training Clay up in some good old-fashioned Brotherhood of Bigots combat badassery? I know it might seem like a bad idea with the potential to kill everyone involved in an atomic explosion, _but_..." he let that _but_ grow very long-winded, "it could also be the best idea ever."

"Great minds think alike. I thought of that too." But then Ilya squashed his hopes with a disgruntled shake of her head. "I tried, down in the quarry, but Danse was dead against it. And when he sets his mind against something he's like a brahmin stuck on a roof in Sanctuary; impossible to move."

"You ever find out how they got stuck up there?"

"Nope."

"Maybe Hancock took one too many chems and stole Danse's power armour in the night."

She snorted into her hoodie sleeve at the image of that. "If Danse knew a Ghoul had been inside his suit, heads would roll."

"Be vaporised, more like."

Ilya gestured the arch of her brow as way of agreeing.

"Time to hatch out a game plan?" the spy suggested in the leeway.

But as they both switched back to the wildlife doco to ponder that concept, they realised that there was a very steep mountain to climb ahead. Danse was now sorting through various cases of ammunition while Clay-Crawler sat upon folded legs on the bunker floor, watching the man in rapt focus, like a child or a dog. It was painfully obvious that he was itching to shower the man with questions on what each item was and its purpose, but was too afraid to disturb the quiet rage rolling off Danse with each motion he made.

"Let's make a rain check on that game plan for now," Ilya decided, "I'm gonna go try to see where his head's at." She pushed off the wall and cautiously worked her way into the documentary, adding a new element that she hoped wouldn't ruffle feathers and rattle spines even more. She prayed that Deacon had enough sense to stick to observing and not participating.

"Good luck."

 _Fuck you._

Clay-Crawler's awareness was piqued on her approach almost instantly, and he aimed his trademark creepy-as-fuck smile at her. She wobbled a perturbed smile back at him, before checking Danse with a peek.

He acknowledged her with a break in his gathering of provisions, then continued right on again.

"Clay, could you give us some space for a moment, please?"

"Yes." The raider nodded devotedly, then shuffled back about a metre. He sat staring up at her, that same smile still plastered over his scarred and tattooed face.

"No, I mean—" she gave up in exasperation before scratching her scalp. "Could you go sit by Deacon, please?"

"Ah. Yes. D-Con." He was up in a flash, but halted with a sheepish look that was common on him. Licking his lips, he slanted himself toward Ilya, concealed his mouth from Deacon's sight, and whispered, "D-Con is wizard." His eyes bulged at her in a mixture of wonder and fear.

Before Ilya could even tilt her head in bemusement, Danse cut in, with a razor tone.

"There is no such thing as a wizard. Whatever that man tells you, is a lie."

Deacon bristled off the wall. "What are you, the fun police? You should wear a bumper plate on your armour that says 'no fun allowed.'"

Ilya cringed in readiness for Danse's counter-strike, but the gap of silence in his stead took her by surprise. When she looked from Deacon back to him, he was boring his gaze into the spy with sizzling hostility, but no whip snapped the air from his tongue. Somehow, his silence was even fiercer a whip than his verbal rap.

And then Danse just placed down his current box of ammo with a careful, eerie calm, avoided Ilya's eye, turned, and strode away into the seclusion of the cave behind the bunker.

Ilya knew what had struck his nerve. "He had to ditch his armour when he went AWOL from the Brotherhood," she explained dully to Deacon's and Clay-Crawler's silent confusion.

Silence responded to her. Hopefully it was an understanding silence. It wasn't the loss of his armour that Danse was mourning, but what the armour represented.

She followed in his wake, glancing back over her shoulder at Clay-Crawler darting back to Deacon like a slave trained to move unnoticed through throngs of nobles and dignitaries. When she reached Danse, he was leaning both palms against the craggy earth wall, head slung, obviously trying to compose himself.

"You okay?"

His head gave a small jerk in her direction as he acknowledged her, but he said nothing.

Ilya felt adrift from him, unsure where she stood. It felt too soon to feel so far from him. "... Are you angry with me?"

The forward question roused him, and he relinquished his palms from the wall to turn a piercing look on her. It hit deeper than she was prepared for. "How can you trust him?" His voice was tempered with restraint, but it was a flickering restraint. "He's a spy and a phony, it's his profession to deceive others, and it's very plausible he knew I was a synth all along, and chose to keep it to himself."

Her answer was swift, as if handed to her by some instinctual chamber of her brain. "Same way I trusted you hadn't betrayed me when I found out you were a synth." Danse stared at her. Just stared. "I knew Maxson was wrong, and I knew everything we shared together had been real. I can't explain why. I just knew."

His stare held firm, but gradually he wound down and let tension evaporate, compressing his lips into a stern line and wearing a heavily burdened frown over eyes that dropped to the ground. "I'm not angry at you," he assured, suddenly weary and bleak. "I'm just... angry at the world, I suppose."

Ilya took the chance to approach him with tentative steps. "Me too." She flashed him an experimental smile, one of shared grief. "So the world can fuck itself. We have each other." When she reached him, he allowed her to place a soft touch on his chest. She would need that touch to help keep him grounded for her next words. "Let's just go back to Sanctuary and forget about it all. We've done our part. It's not our fight anymore."

The selfish part of her had mounted without warning, but it felt liberating to play with the thought of letting everything go. Despite the selfishness that had her wanting to run from the world, it was more for his sake. To get him out of this bunker.

Danse needed the courage to break free from his sanctum of isolation down here—the courage to risk the pursuit of happiness despite the looming threat of losing it. Ilya hoped her offer would give him that courage, and she nurtured a glimmer of hope when Danse didn't immediately rebuff her proposal.

But it was inevitable, as a valorous crease tugged his brow. "No. While the thought is tempting, we both have a role to play in these coming wars. You need to return to the Prydwen and prepare the Minutemen to stand with the Brotherhood against the Dark Bloods."

Ilya smothered the urge to click her tongue in disappointment, the dread of responsibility filling her veins, the remorse of leaving him behind in this bunker gnawing her. Then she fully comprehended what he had said. That they _both_ had roles to play. "But what about you?"

To that, his crease of valour intensified. "I'm going with you."

* * *

 **A/N:** The ultimate mystery: did Deacon know about Danse all along? DUN DUN DUN. I guess we'll never know, and I guess that's the point. I wanted to leave it a mystery, just because I think it's a charming mystery that should stay a mysteriously mysterious mystery.

-There's just a few more loose ends to tie up in the Commonwealth, then the story will finally, FINALLY, be shifting to the Blood Lands. I'm looking forward to the change in pace again and going back to some more story-driven plotlines, as well as having Ilya and Maxson shamelessly butting heads once more :P Also, expect some new elements ahead, like throwing in a plethora of new characters, factions, creatures, and emotional/psychological developments and dynamics in general.


	53. Hell Hath No Fury

**Hell Hath No Fury**

* * *

 _"_ _I'm not letting you go out there without me."_

Danse's authority had made a full-force comeback against Ilya's futile attempts to deny him. He was stalwart adamant. He was that brahmin on a roof. He was Paladin Danse.

Ilya tried many tactics.

Calm common sense. _"Danse, think about this, you risk exposing yourself to the Brotherhood."_

 _"_ _I've thought long and hard. The risk to myself will be worth it in order to keep you safe."_

Militaristic duty and honour. _"What about undermining Maxson's authority? You said you wouldn't do that."_

 _"_ _Maxson won't know of my presence. I'll make sure of that. But you're safety is more important to me than obeying his authority."_

Emotional guilt tripping. _"It's too dangerous for you. Please. I can't lose you..."_

 _"_ _And I can't lose_ you _. Don't you see? Protecting you is my purpose now. I intend to stay alive and by your side in order to do just that. You_ won't _lose me."_

Cruel, desperate fury. _"Damn it, Danse! This is insane! They'll kill you! They're not your brothers and sisters anymore! You're dead to them, and when they find out you're still alive, they won't hesitate to kill you for real this time!"_

 _"_ _...You think I don't know that? You think I don't lie awake at night dwelling on how they turned against me, abandoned me, hunted me down?"_ She had intended to crack his steel veneer, but her cruelty only strengthened it. _"If I'm dead to them, then so be it. I'll be the phantom at your side, and the Brotherhood won't be any the wiser."_

There was no getting him down off that roof.

She had shifted tactics from him and to herself. He would follow her to the gates of Hell, so what if she didn't go to the gates of Hell? She wielded defiance, stubbornness, and utter, crippling fear of losing him. _"The Minutemen don't need me anymore. I secured the alliance, I made sure the Commonwealth stays protected from the Institute while the Brotherhood deploys out to the Blood Lands, now it's up to them. Preston and Ronnie will make sure the Minutemen reserve force is well treated. I'm not a politician or a war leader. I'm not a leader full-stop.."_

 _"_ _Perhaps you're not a natural leader, but you're an influencer, an inspirer, a symbol. You're the heart where Maxson is the mind."_

Ilya had gritted her teeth at the mere sound of that tyrant's name spoken aloud and with such reverence upon Danse's lips, and the thought of seeing his moody mug again riled her deep to the bone.

 _"_ _Not only do the Minutemen respect you, but their loyalty had grown strong throughout the weeks of the alliance. I trained the first batch of recruits myself and I heard how their opinions of you had flourished over time. They see in you what I saw from the very first day we met. They trust you implicitly. You're their symbol of freedom and hope. Like the Brotherhood would follow Maxson through the gates of Hell, so would the Minutemen follow you. You may not have the political and tactical wisdom that Maxson has, but you have the passion and vision to match his. I know you resent him, but Maxson needs your presence for the alliance to survive."_

 _"_ _I want to kill him,"_ she had snarled through the fissures of her teeth, hands moulding into solid fists against her flanks. _"It won't work. We'll be at each other's throats and the war effort will suffer for it."_

 _"_ _Ilya, you need to move past your differences with him for the greater good. Arthur—"_ he had grumbled upon correcting himself _"—Maxson made the right decision to exile me from the Brotherhood. Killing me would have been the best course of action, but he compromised for you."_ He spoke over her objection. _"...and perhaps, deep down, for me, also. But consider from his perspective. If he had allowed me to remain within the Brotherhood, not only would he be defying the High Elders and everything the Brotherhood stood for, but he would spark civil war all over again. Everything would destabilize. The Outcasts would be again. We couldn't afford to let that happen. Maxson and I built our friendship upon the foundations of the alliance of the Brotherhood. To collapse it all just to preserve our friendship would be... wrong. He did what he had to do. He put the Brotherhood, perhaps even the future of humanity, before everything."_

Ilya had simmered with the rise of her fury, struggling to keep it contained. _"You see him like he made this big noble sacrifice. I see him like a radical tyrant on a deluded power-trip."_

Danse had let silence ride the air for a moment. _"If he's a tyrant, then he's a tyrant with a noble cause. Perhaps what the world needs is that tyrant."_

 _"_ _A tyrant that refuses to accept equality and diversity? A tyrant that doesn't know what it is to be human?"_

 _"_ _Diversity is ultimately what brought the world to its knees."_

Ilya had been shellshocked into silence after hearing that.

Brotherhood.

 _Fucking_ Brotherhood of _Fucking_ Steel.

Danse had snatched the win while he could and taken advantage of her silence, executing a snappy exit from the bunker cave. In his head, she knew it was just another _mission accomplished._

Little had Ilya known, while she had been catching Deacon up with the events of the exile and indulging in some much-missed banter, Danse had not only been packing her bags, but his own. He had purposefully neglected his rifle and armour to keep her from realising what he was doing, and when he was through with her pointless counters, he gathered them up on his escape to the elevator. He was chased by a fuming woman, with the spy, raider, and canine in hesitant tow.

The three had stood in the elevator, crammed around the arguing couple, enduring the ride to the surface in awkward silence.

Danse had stormed out first to escape Ilya's tirade, shouldering all their bags with relative ease. The envelope of fresh air hadn't even registered to Ilya for the whirlwind in her. It took every ounce of her self-control not to resort to her military roots and drop f-bombs on him in her airstrike of atomic fury.

 _"_ _Stop being a barbarian and use your brain! You can't just roll up into the airport with me! You don't have your power armour, how are you going to disguise yourself!?"_

 _"_ _I'll improvise. Combat helmets, hoods, cowls, masks. I'm sure your spy friend will have plenty of suggestions."_

Deacon had thrust up his hands in pre-emptive surrender.

Danse went on. _"And I won't be going with you to the airport, that would just be asking for death. While you call in for an airlift, I'll make for the Minutemen Castle on foot. There, I'll deploy to the Rad Lands with the Minutemen auxiliary force."_

 _"_ _The Brotherhood selected the Minutemen reserves, they'll notice you, you won't pass the screening!"_

 _"_ _... Then I highly suggest you assemble your own private security detail before I arrive at the Castle. Assign someone competent as your lieutenant, as giving me that position will draw too much attention. I'll deploy as your personal bodyguard. I'll operate under the pretence of being anonymous due to facial burns or scarring... and mute due to trauma or physical debilitation... a lost tongue or damaged vocal chords..."_

His pauses and blunders had proved that he hadn't clearly thought this through. It was a giant red flag to Ilya. An impulsive Danse was not a sane Danse. _"Listen to yourself. There's a reason fraternization is a bad thing in the ranks. You're thinking with your emotions, not your head!"_

 _"_ _I'm thinking like a human, Ilya!"_

As he had shot around to finally confront her, she had crashed against his chest, unable to slam on her breaks quick enough. The soft impact between them had dulled their ire and rocked free their care for each other that underscored it all.

Ilya had found herself arid, lost for words. He was right. He was acting on his emotions, willingly, knowingly. Who was she to tell him it was wrong?

With eyes somehow both holding her in a soft grasp yet penetrating deep, Danse had dropped all of their bags to the dry earth with a heavy and careless _plop_ , and gently taken her by the shoulders.

 _"_ _I can't stay here with you out there, wondering if you're safe, hoping you're still alive... I can't stay here dying with worry... alone."_ His hand had lifted up to graze a finger along her cheek, and she had shivered under it. _"And I won't let_ you _be alone out there. We have each other's backs..."_

 _"_ _No matter what,"_ she had finished nostalgically, his finger stroking away her fury. As dangerous, as _reckless_ as it was, she knew in her core that she wanted him with her every step of the way. She couldn't do it alone. Couldn't take an army of men and women under her hand, throw them out to the wolves, and make them dance with death. Many would die under her hand, no matter how she made them dance. She couldn't carry that burden without Danse carrying _her_.

 _Not without the chems..._

Ilya had surrendered her cheek into Danse's caress and sighed. _"Please promise me that you'll be safe_." She had known damn well that it was a promise he wouldn't be able to make, but she had just needed to hear him promise her. To hold him to it. To give him that added incentive to stay alive instead of throwing himself into the fire for her.

 _"_ _I promise,"_ Danse had given his tender oath, forehead dashed with emotive lines to reinforce it.

That was when Ilya had kissed him, firmly, with the burst of urgent emotion she could no longer keep welled. Danse matched her firm urgency and took her in his arms, desperate and desirous, his lips warm but bittersweet on hers. She never wanted the kiss to end, and dwelled on him as they parted remorsefully, her hands clutching his jaw with aching need.

Danse had dwelled on her, too, keeping her gathered to his chest, but he proved stronger willed than she and uttered the first words that would force them apart. _"I should go. So should you. Light a signal flare for an airlift. Reunite with Maxson. Join your forces. Make the alliance work. No matter what it takes. But please, be careful with Maxson. You're valuable to him, but push him too far and I fear what he's capable of now. I can't bear the thought of him harming you."_ He had tucked wily strands of hair behind her ear. Even the delicate skin around her ear had shivered under his touch. _"I'll keep a low profile until your vertibird passes, then we'll meet again at the Castle. I'll get to you as soon as I can."_

The idea of him traipsing across the Commonwealth, alone and vilified by his own people, had grated on Ilya's skull. She shook her head. _"No. It's too dangerous to travel alone, especially with the Brotherhood still patrolling."_

 _"_ _There's no other option."_

She clung onto him even harder, about to confess that she would rather he stayed in the bunker alone and wait for her to send back a Minutemen escort, when Deacon cleared his throat from behind them.

He waited until the two afforded him their attention, then shrugged casually. _"Why not come back to Sanctuary with me and Clay? I was planning on leaving him here so you two could get cosy while I headed back to HQ for an intel drop,"_ he had caught Ilya in a purposeful look, _"because they might want to know about the GIANT FUCKING ROBOT just chilling at the airport."_ Ilya had only bit her lip. _"Remind me to harass you on that later."_ Then, he looked back to Danse. _"But, I figure you and Clay are too volatile a duo to be left unsupervised together. Either you'll just leave him tied up somewhere, or he'll end up blowing the both of you up. I can drop into HQ on the way to the Castle. The crew were planning on packing up shop and taking the big walk there to follow you all out to the Rad Lands, and we'd be glad to have you aboard on the journey, Danse."_ He managed Ilya's shocked reaction with a halting hand. _"You were dreaming if you thought you were going out there without us, Missy. We're coming with you, so suck it up. We've been working on some tricks to hide up our sleeves while you two were away, and I think you'll be impressed."_

Danse hadn't looked impressed as he mulled over his options. _"Doubling back to Sanctuary will just waste time."_

 _"_ _But it'll be safer to travel in a small army,"_ Deacon countered effectively. _"Besides, you could probably do with a resupply, and judging by that scrap metal you dumped there, a decent set of new armour, too."_

Danse had pained to glance down at what was left of his Brotherhood-issue armour, heavily damaged from his AWOL run and scantily repaired in raider-style with rusty metal plating and wrapped padding.

 _"_ _Please,"_ Ilya had chipped in, _"for me."_

The grumble brewing in him had been heard a mile off. Clearly he hadn't relished the idea of travelling with her band of companions, but to turn down the offer would be foolish, and he knew it. He had no choice but to fold.

 _"_ _Fine."_

Now, Ilya was aboard the vertibird bound for the Prydwen, feeling as though she were being dragged back in chains. She could still feel the ghost of Danse's bittersweet kiss on her lips, their rushed passion in pain as the signal flare had poured red smoke to beckon her departure. The anguish in his eyes as their hands had slipped apart for the final time had etched a permanent image in her brain.

The cool wind lashed her face with sea salt as the harbour neared below. She squinted through the needling light of the sun and tasted the salt on her lips, cursing it for tarnishing the ghost of Danse's kiss. Her melancholy was trading in for cold fury the closer the vertibird drew to the colossal warship, piece by piece, drip by drop. It seethed patiently, like a demented creature that was only drawn out by its mistress in her summon for reckoning.

 _Oh, such reckoning._

"Should we touchdown on the pad first, or dock straight with the Prydwen?" the pilot asked, a male voice that Ilya didn't recognise.

"Dock," she answered bluntly over the com. She wanted the element of surprise on her side. No time for someone to warn him.

 _I'm coming for you, Maxson._


	54. Like a Woman Scorned

**Like a Woman Scorned**

* * *

Ilya was back.

And she was out for blood.

Her stormy trek through the Prydwen's bowels drew unblinking stares from soldiers and scribes alike, some mumbling in open choler that she had abandoned her post with them, others wearing sympathy for her downtime of recovery; both contrasts a glimpse of that civil war Danse had warned her against sparking.

Such potential power at their fingertips. Such power she wanted to spark; Danse wanted to keep at bay; the elder gripped by the skin of his teeth. The three of them and their dirty little secret. One wrong move and all of it would collapse around them.

Ilya avoided meeting the eyes following her. She had been so fuelled to reach the end of her warpath that she had almost forgotten her guise as Danse's killer.

She couldn't give a fuck to maintain it.

Let them think she was a cold-hearted assassin with no remorse for her former mentor and friend. There were plenty others aboard that spared no sympathy for the loss of the paladin. Monsters.

Let them think she was one of them.

She squared her jaw and sharpened her step. Her arrival was the magnet for all eyes wherever she went, but her eyes were fixed ahead, sparing no diversion to meet the gazes of those she once considered brothers and sisters in arms.

Her gaze was meant for one man alone.

"Maxson."

After she bashed her fist against the hatchway to the elder's quarters, the sentry gave a cautionary glare. "I'm going to have to search you, ma'am."

"Touch me, and you're gonna have a problem firing that gun of yours for the rest of your life." She kept her gaze centred on the steel hatchway.

The Knight stood gawking in disbelief for a moment, maybe trying to pin down any innuendos to her words, but he never got the chance to respond as his elder's voice broke the moment.

"Let her in." Flat and monotone.

Ilya wasted no time. She pushed open the hatch and marched right in, making sure to slam the hatch in her wake.

And there he was. Elder Maxson stood from his terminal to receive her, his features rigidly set to endure her invasion, but his eyes betrayed his anger. He was just as she remembered him. Cold, dark, carrying his air of authority, grizzled from war, premature beyond his youth, burly and proud within his precious battlecoat, all in a package labelled as _big hairy fuckface._

"There you are," Fuckface patronised sternly, letting his disappointment be clear. "You took your sweet time wasting it with that _thing_ , Knight."

He dared. Ilya bristled and coiled like a rattlesnake. She was already striding right at him without preamble.

He deemed her no threat, talking at her as she closed in. Big mistake. "When I had said to take some time for your goodbyes, I wasn't granting you an extended lea—"

The slap that branded his cheek split his words, and the air.

Silence followed.

The force of her strike had thrust Maxson's face offside, and she preyed on him, panting through her nostrils, as the brand to his cheek turned an angry red above the line of his beard. It gave her a sadistic pleasure to watch it blaze to life.

He held himself still with an eerie composure, head still angled where her slap had forced it, but the eyes he then turned back on her were predatory, gleaming in cold blue.

Once, she would have been afraid of what she had awakened, but not now. She was immune to his effect, her fumes too thick to cut through. "He. Is not. A thing."

Maxson crackled like ice, but his silence still grated on in apathy. Nothing. No flaring nostrils, no throbbing jaw, no taut mouth. Nothing. It wasn't enough. He needed to taste her fury. He needed to taste Danse's pain.

"You destroyed him," she snarled venomously through razor fangs. "You. Not me. You. After you threatened me for corrupting his integrity by putting him between us, you were the one to destroy him. He's out there like a ghost, dying inside, torturing himself because of what _you_ did to him!" Her mounted outburst simply fell flat against a wall. His steeled disregard pushed her too far.

Ilya employed her fist this time and launched it right for that richly adorned jaw where he loved to flaunt his fertile masculinity.

But Maxson reacted. He moved like lightning and caught her blow before it landed, a single hand shrouding her smaller fist. Their eyes lanced at each other.

"Stop it," he scolded firmly.

 _No._ Ilya jabbed upward with her knee, snaking through the open gap of his battlecoat to dodge the ballistic filament, striking him in the gut. He gave a small grunt of surprise though he barely flinched, but it was enough to weaken his grip on her fist and relaunch it at his jaw. She wanted that face to bruise.

There was a dull echo as her knuckles made impact, the force jolting up her arm with a delicious pain. Maxson staggered off-centre, and Ilya took advantage by going for the three-hit combo, the taste of violence too little.

But Maxson moved fast. His recovery was instant and he caught her fist again, this time twisting her wrist in on itself to subdue her. As she gave a small gasp of shock, he spun her and locked her arm to the small of her back, forcing her hard against the wall of his chest.

"Stop. It."

The growl in her ear provoked a growl of her own and she shook for freedom, so he pulled her taut in his bone-snapping grasp, wedging her arm further up her back between them to blare in agony. She cried out as her body arched and locked up.

So this had backfired... She hated that she was a whelp against Maxson, hated how steeled he continued to be against her fury, and she especially hated how her back was flush to his brawny chest, her muscles crawling to be free of his very being.

But, somewhere deep inside her, through the tiers of cardinal defiance and utter hatred, lurked a tiny _thrill_.

It enraged her.

Ilya stomped her heel on Maxson's instep, risking the breakage of her wrist. A wince of sharp pain escaped him and he was distracted enough for her to fling her skull back into what she hoped was either his chin or nose.

There was a crack and a grunt. Her wrist tasted freedom, allowing her to spin on him and finally deliver that combo punch.

It ploughed through the scruff of his jaw and he lurched, blood weeping from his nostrils. That sample of success spurred Ilya on to kick out at his groin—cheap and totally dishonourable, but oh-so-deserved.

Luckily for Maxson, he foresaw her dirty tactic and caught at her straight-kick. Not appreciating being at his mercy with her leg in his hands, Ilya tried to wrench free by spinning outward.

He wasn't letting her go, securing her further by increasing his grasp up to her thigh and drawing her nearer for leverage. Glares were held in a daring byplay.

 _Oh hell no._

Ignoring the warning glare he shot her, she planted her boot flat to his torso, used his support to her advantage and pushed off him with her captured leg, fully throwing her weight into it.

Instead of being thrown back, Maxson just seemed to absorb her weight and moved with her, like a parachute dragging in her wind. She was hoisted airborne by the leg and swept around in a precarious flight, both of them growling like beasts in the pirouette of exerted g-forces. Ilya's flight crash-landed with her back slammed up against the nearest steel wall, the air pushed from her lungs in a winded grunt.

Maxson, instead of pinning her, withdrew and let her collect herself. Judging by the pits of lava that were his eyes, he was using all of his restraint not to exert his full force and smack her around his quarters like a ragdoll. Ilya almost wanted him to, just for an excuse to kill him in self-defence. Provoking him into an incriminating bout of abuse hadn't been her intention, but it was a tempting alternative...

She wheezed for air while she observed the privileged blood staining his beard from his nose. He didn't even bother to wipe it from his lips as he stood observing her in equal contempt, shock slipping through each blink.

Ultimately, she had got what she came for—blood. A dark smile possessed her lips.

Maxson sharpened his glare with incredulity. "You're feral," he declared. "Just what in the hell is wrong with you?"

"I'm feral," she recited with irony, shrugging her shoulders against the wall. He tilted his head in odium, but said nothing. She delighted in his speechlessness, still smiling at him.

It was a good time for one of his lackeys to barge in through the hatch. It was Star Paladin Groves, of all people, braced in her power armour, the sentry at the door peeking into the room past her bulk—obviously he had been too much of a coward to barge in himself once he heard the scuffle inside.

"Elder Maxson, sir?" Groves prompted, gaping in horror at her elder, battered and bloody, before slicing accusatory eyes into Ilya, winded and wheezing. It didn't take long for her to draw her conclusion. "Shall I have her executed, Elder?"

Maxson eyed Ilya to draw out his bluff of that risk, then addressed Groves with full composure. "Don't be ridiculous, Groves. Harper and I were just... laying the groundwork for our co-operative campaign." Ilya met his challenging undertone with an arched brow. "You can, however, escort the knight to the infirmary for a full medical check, assure she is well fed and cleaned, then show her to her assigned bunk before lights out."

Groves was readying a vile glare in Ilya's direction, but Ilya spoke out before it hit her. "No. I'm not staying here. I came to talk war, but that's it. I need to check in on my men at the Castle."

"Then you should have checked in at the Castle before reporting back to the Prydwen," Maxson parried tersely. "While you're aboard, you are under Brotherhood jurisdiction, and my command. You will uphold your responsibilities of rank, and you will do so without question. Do I make myself clear?"

Ilya stewed. It would take Danse and the crew a few days to reach the Castle, so there was no hurry to meet them, but she was still eager to get off the airship out of simple discomfort and defiance. She could just toss Maxson the big fuck-you and scrap her service, but that would only leave her at a disadvantage by cutting off her access to Brotherhood insight. Being both under his command and his equal ally was going to be complicated as fuck going ahead. She just had to suck it up.

A savage retort strained on the tip of Ilya's tongue, but she bit on it and jutted her chin in mock pride. "Crystal, Elder."

"Good," Maxson basked. Ilya could just imagine his hard-on kicking up with the petty win over her. "You will report straight to me first thing in the morning. Once you have been given your assignments and have squared away your duties, we will make a stop at the airport to brief you on the state of the Minutemen auxiliary force, then we will travel to the Castle and make the final arrangements for the Minutemen to take up the mantle of the Commonwealth in our absence." He paused to straighten his stance, though he still didn't bother to remedy the blood streaking his beard. "By nightfall, we will have deployed for war."

Ilya only had time to blink before Maxson gestured for Groves to snatch her up by the arm and guide her out of his quarters. He wanted to deploy to the Blood Lands _tomorrow?_

Shit.

How was she going to stall him long enough for Danse and the others to reach the Castle?

Shit, shit, shit.


	55. A Rag-Tag Road-Trip

**A Rag-Tag Road-trip**

* * *

Danse prided himself on his discipline, both interior and exterior. He liked to think that he had adequate control of himself, no matter the situations he found himself in. It came with being a good soldier. There was no such thing as a good soldier without discipline.

But the idiots he was now stuck with were currently wearing his discipline thin.

The three—spy, raider, and dog—meandered in a sloppy excuse of a formation while Danse took up drag to guard their vulnerable rear. Emphasis on the vulnerable. He was already exposed enough in his shoddy armour over his shirt and jeans, and the makeshift field repairs were barely holding it all together.

Had it simply slipped their minds that the Commonwealth was infested with not only raiders, mutants, and various forms of abominable wildlife, but Dark Blood patrols with a penchant to enslave or kill anyone they came across? Yet they continued to interact with each other in obnoxiously loud voices, giggling like little girls at pathetic comical jests while tossing about sticks and stones for Dogmeat to fetch and bring back.

Over, and over, and over again.

Did the game of fetch endlessly entertain the minds of the simple? Dogmeat, he could understand. But the other two... At least they did him the justice of distracting him from the absence of Ilya.

Danse grizzled under his breath, following their antics with a dark glare beneath the rim of his leather hood.

"Go long!" Deacon hollered at the absolute top of his lungs. A gnarled stick was retrieved from a sloppy jaw and then promptly hauled long, spinning on its axis through the air for the dog to chase in eager sport.

Danse cringed at the volume with which the spy had hollered. "Keep it down, both of you. This isn't a roadtrip for your leisure," he reproached them as discreetly as he was able, though he ladled a considerable amount of grit into his tone to compensate.

The two looked back at him, the raider with guilt, the spy with a smile. The smug pestilence.

"Relax," Deacon tossed back with an infuriating amount of calm. "The Railroad tourists had this route marked as safe-ish. Notice how we haven't bumped into any nasties yet? Yeah, you're welcome. I know _all_ the dull routes in the 'Wealth." He tussled with Dogmeat for the stick back, then threw it again for the dog to bound after, grunting with the effort. "Besides, you're the combat specialist in our little army. We get into a fight, that's what we've got you for."

Little army? Danse shook his head. He was a part of no army that included untrained, undisciplined civilians or Wasteland scum out for blood sport without the decency of honour. He was going to the Rad Lands for Ilya, full stop.

Perhaps Deacon's intimate knowledge of the Commonwealth was advantageous, but he was still a right pain in the posterior. Once they shipped out to the Rad Lands, his navigational expertise would be irrelevant, anyhow. Danse supposed he shouldn't blame the raider, however. Clay-Crawler was barely sane enough to take responsibility for his stupidity. But the spy surprised him. A spy, of all people, should know the benefits of moving across the landscape in low profile, even if the routes were reported as docile. You never, _ever,_ let your guard down.

While walking the dusted road detachedly with his laser rifle in hand, eyeing his companions ahead of him, Danse eventually came to the conclusion that at the end of the day, spy or not, Deacon was still just a civilian. The Railroad had no military background, as far as he was aware, meaning they were just an overhyped civilian organisation. Civilians didn't know the importance of duty, honour, protocol, and conduct. Therefore, they could not be trusted.

There's Brotherhood, then there's everything else. Nothing in between.

Perhaps the sly hoodwinker was trying to get under Danse's skin. Perhaps he wanted to witness a synth losing his sanity... Well, he wouldn't get to see that.

Because Danse prided himself on his discipline!

Deacon yabbered on as they walked. "Since we're a team, you think maybe we could use a code name? Red Orchard. Or... Code Violet. Ooh! The Death Bunnies. That'll confuse them."

Danse had no words. Unfortunately, Clay-Crawler did.

"Yes! Blood-bonded warriors must have name. Take place in battle stories. Gain rep. Spread much fear." He walked at the spy's side for a moment in silence. "Blood Warriors!"

Deacon hummed. "Nahh. Too predictable..."

"Blood Boys!"

Deacon snickered. "Too gangish."

"...Blood Dancers!"

This time Deacon groaned, matching the groan inside Danse's head. "Too... bloody. But I like what you did there with the reference to Danse. Ili might like that. We'll have to run this by her before we settle on anything."

Danse was forming a cramp in his jaw. Did his synth identity entitle his lost identity to a posthumous team name? Did they not realise that he was still within earshot behind them? He was nearing the end of his tether with these two insolent fools.

The raider rubbed at the back of his neck in ongoing thought. "Dancing Bloods?"

"Too similar to the Dark Bloods."

"Dancing Red Bloods?"

"Do you ever _not_ think of blood?"

"Enough!"

Both snapped their heads around again at Danse's gravelled outburst. The raider skulked, but the spy just looked exasperated. _Exasperated!_ _He_ was exasperated? Danse felt his internal tether straining by a thread.

"I've had it with you two and your incessant idiocracy! This isn't a game! We are on the brink of war and will soon be inserting within enemy territory, where many soldiers are going to die regardless of our tactical choices! You act like this is just another heroic excursion to aid Preston's endlessly endangered settlements! Well, it's not. This is war. Good people will die. And Ilya will be dealing with the consequences of her choices, carrying each death on her shoulders! If you're really serious about following her into hell and supporting her leadership, then you need to start acting like it!"

Flames roiled from his pores with his tether snapped. As the two culprits stared, Danse felt ashamed that he had lost his discipline. Yet, it had felt so grand.

After a stunned silence, Deacon rounded fully to display his sincerity. A rare occurrence. "Just because we're not all doom and gloom like you, doesn't mean we don't get how dark things really are out there. Just look at Clay. He grew up in a constant warzone. Maybe clan skirmishes aren't all the same as all-out war, but he's still no stranger to war." Clay-Crawler nodded guiltily, as if afraid of siding against Danse in the bout. Deacon plopped a hand to his bony shoulder. "We all deal with things in our own ways."

"It sounds to me like you're in denial about it all," Danse countered. "Deluding yourself to keep from seeing the ugly reality of war."

"If it's a delusion to choose to see the light in the dark, then okay, I'm deluded." The spy's brows then lifted over his shades in suggestion. "You sure I'm the one that's deluding myself about reality, here?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Deacon shrugged elusively. "Just keep it in mind."

The twisting swine. Danse wasn't going to let him twist this around onto him. He was a machine, end of. There was no delusion in it. "You're psychological tricks won't work on me, Deacon. Now move out. We pick up the pace at an easy jog from here out. The Brotherhood won't wait while we dawdle."

The small band of travellers kept to the derelict roads as they made their way north-west to Sanctuary. It was an uneventful trek, despite Danse's surety that his companions would attract undesirables from every corner of the Commonwealth. They skirted the border of Malden's town centre to avoid any run-ins with the inhabitants, and to Danse's utter amazement, both the spy and raider managed to keep themselves quiet for that duration. The game of fetch had long-since ended, and Dogmeat had dropped back in formation to trot along at Danse's side. Danse found he didn't mind the canine taking up his flank. Though the way the dog darted from side to side, skimming his legs as he tried to anticipate Danse's choice of direction, vanishing into the underbrush only to pop out again later to frighten the living daylights out of him, was all getting on his nerves. He felt sure that if he were wearing power armour, Dogmeat would have been flattened underfoot long ago. Accidentally, of course.

As soon as they were clear of Malden, the spy and raider started off their pointless gibberish yet again. Something about popping caps in asses, whatever all that meant. Why would one want to pop off a bottlecap in someone's buttocks? Was it some type of sexual sadism or fetish? Ludicrous. Popping the cap of a nuka cola with a combat knife was perfectly simple. It all became white noise to Danse after a while, his ears tuning out their endless nonsense.

"Sometimes, I find myself wanting to exercise the use of that controversial Wasteland Justice," Danse confessed to Dogmeat in a low voice. The canine peered up at him as he kept in pace with a loping gait. "In the Brotherhood, murder had severe repercussions, most often with execution." Dogmeat just continued to listen as Danse rattled on, and he found an odd comfort in the quiet companionship. So he went on. "It all depended on the circumstances. Murder of another brother or sister was strictly prohibited, but murder of an outsider, such as a Wastelander or other form of lowly civilian, was a grey area. Grey areas bode conflicts of ideals, leading to the compromise of those ideals. Something the Brotherhood preferred to avoid in order to maintain strict law."

Danse took a peek downward and saw that Dogmeat's ears were still perked up in curiosity at the sound of his voice. Finally, someone he could discuss Brotherhood values with and not have to worry over a lack of interest or common ground. "So, I was taught that murder was generally forbidden... But I'm no longer bound by Brotherhood law..." At the hint of his desire to murder the spy and raider ahead, Dogmeat only panted up at him. "You wouldn't mind if I took the law into my own hands, would you, Dogmeat?" Danse asked rhetorically. The dog didn't look like he would mind. In fact, he appeared completely apathetic. "Good dog. I'm pleased we're on the same page."

The daylight soon began to yield to the first glimpse of dusk, clouds painting the sky in sunset hues where streaming clouds licked the horizon. Danse lifted the rim of his tattered hood with a finger to get a clearer view and appreciate the beauty of it. His mind went straight to Ilya at the reminder, pinching at his longing for her to be at his side, to share the sight with her. It was the first time since enduring her departure that he had allowed the hole she left in him to yawn open and loom beneath his feet.

He stopped in the middle of the road and clutched his rifle to his chest in a conscious effort, as if it could somehow comfort him from the sudden hollowness in his gut. The cold grasp of the bunker followed his footsteps on the road he had travelled, gripping him from behind without warning. He had thought it would be easy to leave behind, to just walk away from his sanctum from the outside world, step back into the harsh reality, and take each punch of pain with dignity. He was kidding himself.

The wastes suddenly closed in around him with carnivorous teeth, every corner harbouring a danger, every crevice and shadow housing a possible threat, every crumbling building occupied by a sniper, every skyline breached by the telltale thrum of an incoming vertibird to hunt him down and pronounce him an abomination.

His eyes scanned and his rifle cried to be propped against his shoulder, to reinforce his scans with the backup of a loaded barrel. He was standing out in the open, vulnerable, with only a pull-on hood to conceal his synth identity. Eyes could be watching him, hateful eyes that would kill a synth based on principle alone. Like he once would have... no, like he still would. Would he? Just because he was one of them, didn't make their existence any less wrong.

 _"_ _You're the physical embodiment of what we hate most."_

Danse could see them now, his brothers and sisters, pouring in from all directions, rifles and glares trained in on the synth traitor. An ambush. Just like the super mutants had ambushed his squad in the hive. He would drop to his knees, wasted, just like Cutler had. He would beg them to kill him. Just like Cutler had.

The harsh reality began to recede, replaced by the sharp snap of cruel memory, where all of his demons huddled in one mass. It was like a disembodied fall into a dark, writhing pit. He saw Cutler. He saw himself. He was back there, in the hive, with Cutler. No! Cutler! He couldn't pull the trigger! He couldn't do it! Yet he knew he would! Cutler!

"Hey—" A hand was placed on his shoulder.

Danse's sharp reflexes sparked into defence, shrugging off the foreign hand to then raise his rifle aloft on the owner. He saw red and adrenaline buzzed like a swarm of stingwings in his head.

"Whoa, whoa! Danse, pal, chill! It's just me, Deacon."

It took a solid moment for that to register. Danse blinked and breathed, hovering his glow-sights on the spy's creased forehead for a prolonged second before dropping his aim. The young raider was standing back with his hands raised as if under threat of being shot, too. Fear was intent on his boyish face, broken only by his sporadic scars. Frowning in an odd fusion of guilt and annoyance, Danse chafed. "Don't sneak up on me like that. Do you _want_ to get a laser to the face?"

The moment the snappy words left his mouth, Danse regretted them as a look of concern flashed beneath Deacon's sunglasses, rather than a snide comment in response. "Sneak up on you? I was asking you what you saw that whole time, but it was like you couldn't even hear me."

Impossible, Danse frowned inwardly. His situational awareness was as sharp as ever, even if his malfunctions had briefly taken hold of his focus. Deacon was just attempting a psychological ploy to drive him to insanity.

"You spot someone tailing us?" Deacon pressed in continued concern.

"No..." Danse fought the urge to rub the back of his neck. "I just, uh..."

The look of concern intensified, unnerving Danse. "You feeling alright? You look a little pale."

"I'm fine." He noticed that even the raider was observing in concern.

Deacon propped his hands to his hips, as if to placate him with a casual stance. "Look, Ilya told me you've had it rough lately. Don't worry, she didn't give me much details, just that you're under some stress. If you need to take a moment to recharge, it's no problem. We can stand watch."

The very suggestion was an insult. Disgruntled, Danse twisted his lip at the spy. "My mental state is none of your concern. We keep moving." With that said, Danse moved past him and took up point, not even bothering to beckon them onward.

He needed to get a grip on himself. He was a grown man. While he was a little piqued that Ilya had undermined him by mentioning his stress to Deacon, he understood her reasoning was simply to aid him. Still, he didn't need Ilya holding his hand through every flashback and hardship. She had enough hardships of her own.

Less than a day apart, and he missed her like hell. He fervently hoped that she was going easy on Arthur, and that he was going easy on her in return. Above all, he hoped like hell that she was safe in the Brotherhood's hands.

* * *

Ilya's arm ached under the crunching grip of Groves' armoured hand. She was dragged from Maxson's quarters in a humiliating display, like a rebellious girl hauled off to the naughty corner, and contrary to the elder's order, Groves deviated from the infirmary and instead took the steps down to the rec area underdeck. Ilya was shoved mercilessly against the nearest support column.

"Don't you _ever_ harm Maxson again. Now you listen good, you conniving little bitch," Groves began with a fatal tone, leering down on Ilya from the height of her power armour. Her ice-blonde hair was pulled so taut in a topknot that it gave her a brittle facelift. "You may have Maxson wrapped around your little finger, but not me. I see you. You think you're someone special? Some big bad bitch with an army at your beck and call? Wise up." The woman lowered in on Ilya until she was invading her breathing space. "You're nothing but a bump in the road to the Brotherhood. Just another piece of scum with overreaching ambitions and shallow delusions of power. Your Minutemen are pathetic, I've seen squires with more mettle. You have no place here, and no respect next to Elder Maxson's legacy. You're his tool, not his equal, understand?"

Despite herself and the turbulence in her blood, Ilya felt small under the star paladin's pinning gaze. She grappled for a shred of fortitude, even if it was feigned. "Go fuck yourself. Better yet, go fuck Maxson. That's all you seem to be good for with your perfectly polished armour."

That earned her a nasty eye-twitch, before a metal forearm was shoved against her throat, compressing her airway. Ilya winced but refused to struggle. "Hit a nerve?" she managed to cough out, "Worried he keeps you close just because a tall blonde at his side makes him look good?"

"I know my worth," Groves responded coolly. "But you? Projecting, perhaps?" the woman then suggested in a voice just as sweet as Ilya's had been, twisting her angle. "Worried the elder is keeping you close merely as a pretty trophy for his own amusement? It's not for your diplomatic worth, you can be certain of that. Perhaps _you're_ the one that's only good for a piece of ass to fuck when he tires of your entertainment value. Ever consider that, princess?"

The way she blended haughty vocabulary with crude bites gave a new shape to the paladin—royal bitch. Ilya maintained her fortitude, if only to aggravate the woman and preserve as much pride as she could manage. Which wasn't much. "I'm flattered you think my ass is good enough to catch the mighty Maxson's eye. But I'll pass, you're not my type. Or are you just jealous that he doesn't have eyes for you?"

Groves clamped a metal hand over Ilya's mouth and then shoved her head back into the steel column, muffling the cry that pushed through her compressed throat. The pain knifed through her skull, conjuring a flare of incomprehensible colours over her vision. Groves then pressed harder against her throat, watching in silence until Ilya finally began to struggle for air.

"Your provocations are pointless. If I ever see you so much as touch him again, I'll see to it that whatever is left of you won't even be useful for whoring."

Stars pocked Ilya's vision as her lungs were denied air, and it dragged on for a barbaric moment until she heard the words whispered close to her ear canal.

"Did you really kill Danse? I have this strange feeling that he's still out there somewhere, infesting the Wastes like a disease. I just can't seem to shake it... Isn't that strange?"

Then Ilya was released and found herself crashing to the deck on all fours, gulping up air to feed her lungs. She barely had time to recover before Groves tugged her up by the arm again and marched her back up the steps toward the infirmary. Her mind was a ferment of panic over Danse's cover as she was pushed at one of the medical cots and gruffly told to sit. She sat.

The exchange between Groves and Cade was muted as her head swam in a sea of questions. Did Groves know? What if she had followed her from the Prydwen to the bunker? Had Maxson had her tailed? Was that how he had found her and Danse? But if Groves was in on Maxson's secret, why not just outright threaten Ilya with it? It would be so easy for the star paladin to keep her in line with the threat of revealing Danse to dangle over her. Maybe she was under Maxson's orders to keep Ilya from knowing that she was in on it. It would prevent Ilya from using it as leverage against _her_ in return.

Ilya cringed as her brains scrambled with the power play. Fuck. What was she doing? She just waltz onto a warship and suckerpunched an elder of the Brotherhood of Steel. What the _fuck_ was she doing? She really was insane. Why was she even here? She wasn't a general, a double agent for the Railroad, or some saviour of synths and slaves. She was just a fucking soldier, a grunt on the ground trained to kill and only kill.

Knight Captain Cade was staring at her at point-blank range. He was riddled in concern. "Harper? Are you feeling alright?"

"...Yeah..." The words came out blandly.

"You've been gone for over a week. I can see you have a few bumps and bruises from your excursions out there." He gestured with a gentle finger at the swelling and throbbing she felt around her neck, no doubt a developing bruise from Grove's chokehold, and then the red band of skin around her upper arm beneath her t-shirt sleeve, where Groves had dragged her by. That would also form a decorative bruise. The queen bitch.

Cade gave a placating smile as she rubbed at the pain around her throat. "I'm just going to give you a quick check-up, see to it that you haven't picked up any infections or doses of radiation, generally just to make sure you're in a healthy state for service. Just standard procedure. Nothing invasive, don't worry."

His conciliatory tone helped to ease the burst of panic in Ilya's chest over Danse's safety, enough that she could clearly take stock of her surroundings, and notice that Groves was gone. A breath left the constriction in her chest, and she felt her shoulders give way a little. Eventually, she nodded to the doctor. "Go ahead."

Cade's eyes shone with sympathy throughout his examinations, but Ilya shied from eye contact. She knew he was itching to ask how she was coping with Danse's 'betrayal' and death, more specifically his assassination by her hand. It felt wrong keeping up her jaded assassin guise to Cade, but it was too risky to confide in him, even if he was the most sympathetic soul aboard the warship.

If she did confide in him that Danse hadn't been an Institute spy, would be even believe her? It had been hard enough for Maxson to believe it, and even after accepting the truth, he still wanted Danse dead on pure principle. But, if by some chance, Cade did take her word for it, would he then disapprove of Maxson's handling of the situation? If so, then how many others in the ranks might also disapprove? She doubted they would openly talk about it, though, as any sniff of betrayal to Brotherhood ideals that Maxson picked up on would result in exile. Their ideals were paramount to their end goal.

When Cade was done, he sent her an uplifting smile, which finally caught her eye contact. "You have a mild concussion, it seems. Nothing disconcerting, but if you find yourself with a stubborn headache that lasts several days, be sure to check back." He waited for her to acknowledge this with a faint nod. "You're cleared for active duty, Harper. Not that I was too concerned, mind you. You know how to take care of yourself out there in the Wastes."

 _Danse taught me well,_ she wanted to say. There was a glint of mournful knowing in his kind eyes that suggested he wanted to say those very words too, but obviously didn't know how she would take it.

On a fleeting whim, she considered asking him about Danse's PTSD diagnosis. Maybe it could help prove to them that he wasn't simply just a machine, but an emotionally complex being just like any other human. But the fleeting whim went as fast as it came. They would probably just pass it off as an Institute tactic to fool them into thinking he was human.

She had to accept it. Danse no longer belonged with the Brotherhood. Maybe one day he would accept it too.

Ilya parted the infirmary in a dismal vacuum, her steps lethargic as she made her way down the corridor toward the mess hall. Or maybe it was just the concussion Groves had applied to the base of her skull. The soft chatter colouring the air suddenly fell into dull murmurs. She swallowed and pushed into the unwelcome air, keeping her eyes low, feeling a foreign parasite in a hornet's nest. The crew made way for her, some staring brazenly, others making an effort not to out of respect.

Maxson may have saved the Brotherhood another civil war, but there was still a silent civil unrest sweeping through the populace, and Ilya's every footstep resonated with it.

The waft of food made her stomach shiver with aversion, but she knew she would need to eat to keep her mind sharp—a sharp mind was a necessity when dealing with Maxson. She grabbed her rations from the mess officer, who managed a lanky smile as a parting gift, and then she meandered over to an empty table and lowered into a seat, sighing heavily.

Force-feeding her resistant mouth took a considerable time, along with absently puddling with the slop on her tray, and trying to ignore the fact that everyone's eyes were drawn to her. She recalled Danse telling her that this particular dish was called 'shitty mess,' and then suppressed a grin at the memory of his awkwardness at simply having to swear, like it was beneath him. Such a stiff neck. A lovable stiff neck.

It felt so wrong, _alien_ , being back aboard the Prydwen without him. Being amongst _his_ people without him.

She missed him like hell.

"I understand how you must be feeling, sister. Danse betrayed us all."

Ilya shot a look up at the source. Knight Lynch, the young woman that had been part of Danse's Rad Land squad, and who had aided Ilya in rescuing him from an angry horde of raiders. Teetering in a place between shock and outrage, Ilya only stared up at her.

Lynch seemed to translate her silence as instability. Her mocha features sagged in condolence. "Still, it can't have been an easy order to follow. I wasn't nearly as close with him as you were, but he was still my squad leader and I respected him greatly. Had I been in your place, I'm not so sure I would have been able to do the right thing and pull the trigger. Synths have a way of making their emotions seem so real. But you beat the Institute at their own disgusting game."

Again, Ilya just stared. _Do the right thing and pull the trigger._ The words droned on like a broken record in her head.

Lynch waited for a response, but when it was clear she was left hanging, she nodded in pity again. "I'm sorry. You must be exhausted from travel. I'll let you eat in peace. But if you need an ear, I won't be far away." The smile she offered seemed genuine, and for a moment, her hand hovered out as if she were about to place it on Ilya's shoulder, but checked the motion immediately. "And I'm not just saying that out of courtesy."

Ilya managed a thankful flicker of her lips that was passable as a smile, and then went back to puddling with her nutritional paste as Lynch left her alone. Time passed slowly as she spooned down as much as she could, and when she finished and tended to her Pip-Boy, she was shocked to see she had been sitting there for over two hours, digesting her food and her situation numbly.

Not long after she had pushed away her empty tray, Groves stomped into the mess with a sour face, which wasn't stray from her usual resting face. The woman would actually be quite attractive if she cared to hold herself more pleasantly. With an unsavoury tone, Ilya was told to follow her up-deck to the crew quarters, where bunks were lined in rows against the railings bordering the open platform.

Ilya had always hated sleeping out in an open space where a passing soldier on deck patrol would disturb her sleep on a constant basis. Even in the pre-war military, her platoon had been spared quarters with actual walls, in some form or another, even if they were just drab tents with rips and tears.

But she had learned quickly that in the Brotherhood, if one didn't adapt fast to crude conditions, one either went insane, or got dead, fast. This military didn't waste time and resources making things look pretty. She could respect that. It bore the harsh realism of the Wasteland. Plus, practically living in the laps of fellow soldiers with no sense of privacy only strengthened the bonds of brotherhood, or sisterhood.

"This bunk is yours. You can stow your gear in the footlocker there. You're to confine your leisure activities to this deck for the remainder of the night. Waste bucket is behind the cargo crates over there. If you're on rotation to empty the bucket, or if you need medical attention, ask the patrol officer or the sentry to be escorted out. Report to your bunk at lights-out. At 0600 tomorrow morning, report to me in the maintenance bay for your duty schedule. Goodnight." With that pleasantry done and dusted in an officious manner, Star Paladin Groves performed a rigid chest salute, then rotated in her power armour and strode back down the stairway for the deck below.

Ilya blinked owlishly in her wake, and then shook her head with an eye roll. Surveying her new bunk buddies as they loitered in their off-duty time, most of them were eyeing her with either disdain, or pity. She hated both receptions.

Dazed in a tonic of pain, panic, anger, and loneliness, Ilya ambled over to her assigned bunk, dumped her travel pack and holstered weapons, rolled across the mattress, and curled into a fetal ball.

A chain fell free from the collar of her t-shirt, and her hands grasped at it in remembrance. Danse's holotags. It was risky to wear them in Brotherhood company, but fuck them. Even a jaded assassin could mourn the friend she killed, traitor or not.

She brushed her thumb over the tags. Feeling their comforting weight around her neck gave her a small piece of Danse to carry with her. Enclosing the tags in her fist, Ilya placed them securely to her heart and curled in on them, gathering her knees. She just hoped he would be able to reach her before they went to war.

* * *

It was nightfall by the time the rag-tag band of travellers reached Sanctuary. The growing settlement effused the warm glow of life to push away the dark, and the low hum of distant voices and gatherings gave a welcoming ambience that seemed to stretch out and beckon them in.

It had been a long time since Danse had come here. The last time he was here was to escort Ilya home after she went rogue, and then help plan the heist on the Prydwen to retrieve Clay-Crawler. To think back on how troubled he had felt to deceive the Brotherhood, it all seemed trivial now.

He glanced over at the small raider to his side, who was gawking ahead at the glowing settlement with open-mouthed wonder. He supposed Sanctuary was the nearest thing the raider had to a home now. Then, with an unexpected pang of sentimentality, he realised that it was also the nearest thing _he_ had to a home now. The notion brought a frown to his brow.

Nevertheless, it felt wrong to be here without Ilya. These were her people, not his. He just didn't fit in among these civilians, in their lifestyle of... meaningless tedium. What would their legacy be, crop yield and offspring who inherited furthermore crop yield? Where was the ambition, the purpose?

Danse stopped on the weathered bridge over the brook of water that cradled the settlement, gazing listlessly while Deacon and Clay-Crawler wandered ahead. Every bone in him ached to turn on his heel and romp back the way he had come at a lightning pace, eating up land in order to get back to Ilya. Not just for his sake of alienation and loneliness, but for her safety.

He couldn't shake the feeling that she was out of her depth. Or even in a hostile environment. He knew she was aptly capable of looking after herself, but looking after her fiery temper was another story altogether... Tensions would undoubtedly be running high within the Brotherhood right now, and Ilya could very well be the crucible to civil war if she didn't control herself. Arthur would have his hands full, Danse imagined with a twinge of pity for his estranged brother.

Even so, if the elder even laid a hand on her, Danse would not hesitate to break his oath of loyalty. Brother or not.

"Yo, Big D?" Deacon called back from the other side of the rickety bridge. Danse peered in his direction with a bewildered brow.

Big D?

"You coming or what?"

Shaking his head, Danse said nothing and just walked over the remainder of the bridge into Sanctuary's border. The other two fell into step at his flanks, with Dogmeat trotting on ahead of them, eager to be back home and greet his extended pack. But Danse stopped again within a few steps.

His bewildered brow returned. "...Why are there packets of Dandy Boy Apples hanging off Sanctuary's entrance sign?"

Deacon gave off a slight guilty chuckle in apparent remembrance. "Oh yeah, that. Codsworth's idea. It was back when you and Ili had that fight and parted ways before the raid on Dunwich. He thought they might lure you back to us." At the unimpressed look on Danse's face, Deacon smiled sweetly and shrugged. "Hey it was his idea."

The centre of Sanctuary's roundabout was inhabited by a calm mass of settlers, traders, Minutemen, and those of what had become known as 'the crew.'

 _Not_ the Death Bunnies, Blood Boys, or Blood Dancers.

All were gathered around a large campfire beside the central tree that reached up and splayed overhead like an ancient guardian. Makeshift bars and snack stalls tended to the thirsty and peckish, while sturdy picnic seats or lounge chairs served as refuge for the weary and resting. Some huddled down in the sparse grass near the glowing embers, wrapped in bundles of soft leather or fabric blankets, while some stood in remote circles to socialise, drinks or cigarettes in hand. It was a cosy, tranquil atmosphere to ward off cold notions of loneliness.

Dogmeat released a joyous bark, and that was it. All turned toward the four and greeted them in a wave of clashing voices and calls.

Deacon called back. Clay-Crawler grinned from ear to ear. Danse grumbled.

It wasn't long before they were ushered over to the generous campfire, given bottles of purified water, offered various forms of snacks, and exchanging rudimentary pleasantries that Danse found himself flowing through with relative ease, despite himself. Holding the rank of paladin for so many years had conditioned him to cope with these types of communal situations. Ilya called it being social. He called it negotiating with natives and engaging in small-talk for the sake of political relations.

But he was no longer representing the Brotherhood...

"So," Hancock deviated from the pleasantries with the rousing word, pulling on his cigarette before going on, "not that it's not nice and all to see you gentlemen back with all your bits and pieces still attached, but aren't you missing someone?"

Danse stomached the Ghoul's proximity, but wished he wouldn't exhale his tainted smoke in his particular direction. "She reported straight to the Prydwen. There was an... incident that had us out in the field for over a week. She and Elder Maxson had immediate business to attend to, so I came here in her place." It wasn't exactly a lie, it was the truth, just excluding a few details.

He caught the angle of Deacon's sunglasses and tore his gaze of them quickly. He just wasn't prepared to divulge these people of his revealed identity. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Why did they need to know that he was really a machine? It could potentially alienate them. Make them liable to distrust him even further. Wastelanders vilified synths. Everyone vilified synths. They didn't need his presence unnerving them. He didn't need their fear and hatred unnerving _him._ He just wasn't ready.

Hancock's coal eyes were scrutinizing him brashly, decayed fingers casually lifting his cigarette for thoughtful drags. So Danse met his brash scrutiny head-on, gridlocking eyes. He wouldn't squirm under the gaze of a Ghoul.

Piper picked up on the taut byplay. "Our little Blue's a busy girl, huh?" she attempted to lighten the mood with her buoyant charisma. "All grown up and taking on the world. Those raiders better watch themselves. Especially with us on her side. Am I right?"

That called for everyone to agree in some form or another, and did the trick of healing the open tension between Danse and Hancock. Drinks were awkwardly sipped or gulped in the sudden lull. Danse had to hand it to Piper, she knew how to play a crowd to her liking. Came with being a reporter, he supposed.

Nick, the ghastly looking synth that always gave Danse the creeps, was the first to break the silence. "Well, if we wanna muscle in on this campaign of hers, then we all better get a good night's sleep, I think. We have a long road-trip ahead of us in the morning."

In the _morning?_ Danse shifted his weight with unease, civil calm masking a shot of anger. "We don't have the luxury of time," he told the synth, whose neon gold eyes turned on him sharply. "If we want to ensure we reach the Castle before the Brotherhood deploys, we need to set off tonight. As soon as possible, in fact."

There were blinks and exchanged looks.

Danse's blood pressure spiked. "Please tell me you've all packed your field kits..."

"Uh, define field kit," MacCready, the scrawny mercenary, spoke up. "I don't wanna be lugging around as much crap as Ilya does on a daily basis."

Danse took that as a no. "I'm talking survival essentials, food rations, medical basics, munitions and combat skins. How many times do I have to stress this to you civilians? This isn't a road-trip to la-la land. We're going to war. And we don't have time to waste. We need to double-time it or we'll be left behind." Not waiting for their complaints, he began to pace off in the direction of the barracks the Minutemen had set up, intent on packing for them if they couldn't do it themselves. "Time is of the essence, soldiers! Now move! Do you really want Ilya to be out there alone because you were all too incompetent to get yourselves organised?"

Over his loud stomps on the concrete path, he heard Deacon give a not-quiet-enough, "I'll handle this."

 _Handle this?_ They were the ones that needed handling, not him! At the sound of footsteps giving chase on his six, Danse picked up his stomping pace toward the wooden barracks built upon one of the town's residential lots.

"Um, Danse?" Deacon tried. Danse ignored. "Danse, pal. Listen." The spy was at his side now, keeping pace in an odd hobbling skip. "Listen. Look. Listen." Which was it, listen or look? "Uh, so, not all of us are super fit soldiers like you, you know? Working a growing settlement isn't as easy as you might think, and we don't just hang around here to keep up to date with Ilya and help out if she needs us. We pull our own weight here. Scavenging, hunting, patrolling, Minutemen rescues, construction, tending the crops. That kinda stuff."

Danse breached the barracks and stomped right over to the requisitions area, selecting appropriate duffel bags and travel packs for each member of the expedition.

Deacon hovered around like a foul smell. "They'll be tired after a day's work. And the Castle is a long, looong way away. Don't you think we'll make better speed if everyone's well rested? And Preston took a bullet a few weeks ago, remember. Now he has an actual excuse not to help out when another settlement needs help."

"If he's going to be a liability, then he should stay behind."

"You're kidding me, right? If we leave him behind he'll be radioing us non-stop telling us how we need to get back and help such-and-such settlements from a horde of cute but deadly laser-shooting bunnies."

"...What is it with you and your fascination with bunnies?"

"Dunno. I should probably get that checked out sometime, huh."

To that, Danse just lifted a brow as he sorted through the munitions stockade.

"Look. All I'm asking is that we wait until morning to move out. It'll be safer in the daylight, too, despite myself. I'll deal with the exposure. And speaking of myself, I'm not as... well I'm not a spring chicken anymore, okay? Things aren't as limber as they used to be, and I get tired sometimes. I walked all the way from here to your bunker, and then back again, and I'm pooped. Clay must be too."

"Well then perhaps you should consider retiring."

It still didn't shut him up. He clicked his tongue loudly in retort. "Alright, I'll give you that one for free. But come on, Danse. What's the huge rush? A military deployment of this scale isn't something to be rushed, and Maxson's no noodle-head... Actually, let me rephrase that. He's a noodle-head, but he knows how to handle war. He'll give Ilya the time she needs to brief her men and get them ready."

"You don't know Maxson," Danse challenged grimly, not ceasing his preparations. "He won't cut corners with deployment procedures, but he's aggressively proactive. The moment Ilya set foot on the Prydwen, he would have set things in motion. She'll be lucky if she gets a single day to prepare her forces. And as far as Maxson was concerned, the Minutemen reserves were only a token force to support co-operative relations. He never intended to insert them in the field."

Deacon's frown framed his opaque sunglasses in the dark of the barracks. "She's a smart cookie. She'll stall long enough for us to catch up. Don't worry." When he went to pat Danse on the shoulder, Danse flinched and stiffened at the unexpected contact. A small grin tugged on Deacon's lips. "Just relax. We're no good to her if we all show up half-dead and high on stims."

In the back of his mind, Danse knew that Deacon had valid points. He had many things to prepare himself before setting out again, like getting a new armour set fitted, not to mention a helmet to conceal his identity, and requisitioning a new arsenal for various combat scenarios. And while it pained him to admit it to himself, he was tired from the day's travel. These hopeless civilians needed him at his best in order to safely lead them across the Commonwealth.

The spy was right, and Danse loathed him for it.

With a laboured sigh, he surrendered and issued a bleak nod. "Alright, you've made your point, Deacon. We rest for the night. But at precisely 0600 tomorrow morning, we hustle our preparations and then move out at break-neck speed. Absolutely no delays. Yes?"

"Yes, sir!" Deacon had the audacity to chime, clobbering his chest in a lousy excuse for a Brotherhood salute.

Danse watched as the source of his headache sauntered out of the barracks, and then shook his head.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry for another long wait, I finally had a weekend off work so I knuckled down. Just Danse being a grouch mostly. And no, I can't take credit for the bad comic relief with Deacon. The Death Bunnies was all him, he only has himself to blame for that one. (It was one of his many quirky in-game lines, lol)


	56. You and What Army?

**You and What Army?**

* * *

It had been a long night. Just as Danse predicted.

Sleep had been a pending thing, placed mockingly out of his reach by some twisted higher power. His own mind, he knew. Far easier to hang it on his malfunctions.

He just couldn't stop thinking, worrying. About Ilya; about Arthur; about the alliance; about the wars. But foremost eroding his sense of sanity was Ilya's safety in the hands of the Brotherhood. Arthur was under immense pressure and danger by carrying the secret of Danse's fate around with him, and Danse would never forget his mercy at his own risk. But it was blatantly clear that Ilya spared no appreciation for Arthur's mercy. Her personal vendetta against the elder for his attempt on Danse's life overpowered her.

While Danse was flattered that she was so protective of him—his guardian angel of fire—he was also frustrated with her narrow-minded aggression toward Arthur. She knew exactly how to push the young elder's buttons, while also secretly enjoying it, and Danse feared the elder's mounting pressure would get the better of him. The two of them were a time-bomb waiting to blow.

He feared for both their sakes.

The only silver lining was that with all these concerns clouding his thoughts, Danse was not, for once, thinking of his own life. Or the loss thereof.

But it all still prevented him from sleeping, in the end.

His half-hearted attempts at chasing sleep were conducted in the barracks the settlement had constructed for any passing Minutemen to take shelter in; more or less a safe house. It was sturdy and passably defensible; nothing in comparison to Brotherhood standards, but still passable. After several hours of torturous anxiety and counting the nicks in the wooden framing, Danse had thrown in the towel and ambled out into the shadowed street, marvelling at the quiet air that was always absent at the airport on night-watch duty. It had always been a hive of activity no matter the hour. In Sanctuary, the quiet was actually unsettling to him. It meant low awareness, and vulnerability.

Edgy, Danse had crossed the bridge and found himself holed up in the small red rocket workshop between Sanctuary and Concord. He remembered spending many a day and night here with Ilya, repairing their armour or modifying armaments between assignments. Those days seemed so innocent, looking back. The pair of them stealing glimpses at each other over shoulders, stumbling over their own tongues, nervous quivers whenever the other moved too close, rushes of heat under the slightest of 'accidental' touches, poor attempts at humour to loosen up their relationship, which then led to the waves of awkward flirting. Neither of them had managed anything smooth or even remotely subtle. Hence, awkward.

It had been borderline fraternising, but Danse had grinned at the memories as he powered on the workshop's lights. Thinking back on it all now, he knew nothing would have ever happened between them if he hadn't been exiled from the Brotherhood. To think his exile was a blessing in disguise, so that he could have Ilya, Danse had mulled over that for a long while as he pottered around the workshop, gathering materials to service his laser rifle and layout blueprints for his new armour kit.

Before long, he was back to dwelling on his lack of Ilya, fretting for her safety and mental wellbeing. He was so drowned in a fog of stress that he hadn't noticed Dogmeat padding into the workshop and patiently sitting watching him from a corner. Not until Danse turned around, jerked in fright, and drew his laser sidearm on reflex.

Dogmeat had whimpered as if scolded, and remorse lowered Danse's arm. From then on, the canine had served as a loyal companion throughout the long, lonely hours of the night. It took him a while to admit it to himself, but Danse was glad for the company.

By the break of dawn, he had deconstructed, cleansed, replaced, repaired, modified, and reconstructed his semi-auto laser rifle, improved with a boosted capacitor, a recoil compensating stock, a beam focusing muzzle, and an interchangeable short recon scope to cut through the red haze of the Rad Lands. He considered swapping out the semi-auto barrel for full-auto, but opted for the range of fire rather than quantity. The beam splitter on his sidearm could take care of hordes of raiders at close range.

Now all he required was a new set of armour. It needn't be cutting edge, just adequate enough to get him from point A to B. Easier said than done in a civilian settlement, even if it was a main Minutemen outpost.

Dogmeat stuck close to his heels as Danse bore his refurbished rifle back into the settlement, surveying the rise of settlers and traders in the crisp morning air. Bleary-eyed, they surveyed him in kind with tints of apprehension. To them, he was still Brotherhood, still human. Danse preferred it that way.

A stray thought caught him that Deacon's words yesterday had been right. That he was deluding himself to escape the pain of reality.

No. Damn that spy. It wasn't a delusion, it was a coping mechanism. He wasn't pretending he was human, or pretending he was anything other than a synth. He knew damn well what he was. Too damn well.

Or maybe that was the delusion the spy had referred to? In all honesty, Danse wasn't completely sure what he had meant by it.

Proceeding, Danse marched right into the barracks. "Everyone up! We have a lot of work to do if we want to make for the Castle today. I want us prepped, locked, and loaded so we can cover as much ground as possible before nightfall. Make whatever preparations you deem necessary, and double time it!"

Shock quaked through the bunks and scattered sleeping rolls as the crew members and Minutemen were rudely awakened. Danse had always had a secret liking for doing that to his subordinates in the Brotherhood. Especially the greenhorns. Perhaps it was sadistic of him, but those startled faces and hopeless scrambles not to be the last to report never got old.

His gaze caught on a gloomy figure in a lone chair tucked away in a corner, like a warden in the night. The flash of glowing eyes revealed the identity, and Danse scowled at the other synth on reflex. Nick only sparked his lighter on a cigarette and averted his eyes indifferently, which only begrudged Danse more.

They were not the same, Danse assured himself to spite the opposing voice on his shoulder. They were not alike. And he didn't have time to digress the matter further. No. He was not the same as that _thing._

Removing his scowl from Nick, and leaving them all to their grumblings, Danse went off in search of the Minutemen quartermaster to assemble a new armour kit, hopefully something adequate enough to see him back to Ilya unscathed. She needed him unscathed.

By the time he was done, everyone should have filled up on their breakfast and amassed their gear for the journey.

If not, then heads would roll.

* * *

Ilya had slept brokenly throughout the night. Dreams had awoken her several times, of the atom bombs falling, of Nate's murder, Shaun's kidnapping, Danse's suicide, but after the trembles of nightmares faded, she would weep into the steel night at the weight of the coming war on her shoulders—the blood destined to stain her hands. More than once she had reached over for Danse's warmth to fill her grasp, only to find her grasp full of loneliness.

 _Alone,_ her dark presence whispered. _Alone and surrounded by the enemy._

But was the Brotherhood her enemy now?

In those moments, she prayed with all her heart that Danse was safe out there, and restraining himself from any reckless acts in order to return to her ASAP, at the risk of himself. She knew him.

At 0500, her Pip-Boy alarm dragged her from another dream into the commotion of soldiers rousing each other for the morning drag. Pulling on her crisp jumpsuit in its orange and tan detail, she ghosted through all the morning necessities, numb and soulless, falling back into a military economy with ease. Avoiding talks was simple, since no one was eager to approach while her resting-bitch-face was deployed on active duty.

At 0600, she was walking down deck for the maintenance bay to report to Groves, her stomach in a feuding knot of dread and rage. Bound to the chain of command, Ilya was helplessly at the woman's mercy, and she knew Groves would exploit that for all it was worth.

The walk took her past the armour station that still harboured Danse's power armour. Seeing it again struck her and stayed her step. It was almost like seeing the man himself looming before her, his presence so strongly tied to the suit even now. It had been his pride and joy. Part of his spirit was fused into that thing. It had borne him through battle with unwavering loyalty, catching the bullets and blasts that craved his life, feeding him its strength and speed, its limbs an extension of his own, its plates sacrificed to preserve his body, its fusion core powering him through the hell of all.

And now it was empty, abandoned, lifeless. The Brotherhood must have recovered it from where Danse had left it in the Glowing Sea. What destiny awaited it now was anyone's guess.

Ilya frowned as this cold dwelling gave her heart a bitter beat. The armour belonged with Danse. It was a warrior's right.

"Knight!"

The sharp call stole Ilya's attention away from Danse's power armour. Groves.

"When I ask you to report at precisely 0600, I expect not a minute's delay." The star paladin strode toward the knight fully-fledged in her power armour, polished to a high sheen like chrome paint. Her blonde topknot, impeccable. Her hazel eyes—blue muddied with brown—were daggers.

Ilya dared to lift her chin a fraction in defiance. "This is Danse's armour," she stated tonelessly, trying to appear aloof and not defensive of it. "Why is it here?"

"Why is it your concern?" Groves pushed back, and Ilya detected the shade of suspicion pass over her eyes. Suspicion, and not knowing. Ilya nursed the hope that Groves really didn't know the truth that Danse lived.

She levelled her gaze and retained aloofness. "Curiosity."

Groves appeared to take that as a challenge, tightening her brow and stretching her jaw to contain her sudden ire. "Your tact to change the topic of your lateness is transparent, Knight. Your duties await you. Have the maintenance bay workstations restocked of tools and supplies, including filling up the stockpiles with the new cargo brought in down at the airport this morning. The maintenance power armour is at your disposal for the heavy lifting, but I expect it to be left in a clean and well maintained condition when you're done with it. After that, report to Proctor Teagan to replenish your provisions for mission-ready status. Stow them, then report to Proctor Quinlan to be assigned into the research patrol rotation. Then report straight to Elder Maxson on the observation bridge. He wishes to speak with you before the lunch hour. Don't keep him waiting. Dismissed."

Ilya crunched her jaw as Groves stomped away. One day, she was going to feed that fucking woman her bladed boot.

* * *

The morning hours rolled on too slowly for Danse's liking, the sun loafing upward in a lazy crest. He planned to set out before the sun peaked the sky, and had made that abundantly clear to all whom it concerned, in constant, loud, reminders. Especially when the reincarnated Dogmeat became the centre of loving attention, instead of the preparations.

He had occupied the time in a flurry of anxious preparations: raiding the armoury and purchasing some new black cargos with a fitted grey shirt, and a good, sturdy pair of combat boots to replace the jeans, flannel, and unsupportive sneakers he had been slopping around in for over the past week; acquiring a new set of military-grade combat armour in black coating, spending a great length of time fitting it securely to his form; scrounging through the various apparel stalls in the settlement for several more hoods, cowls, and scarves to conceal his identity, then purchasing an adequately constructed synth combat helmet with a full faceplate and visor. He was aware of the stigma around wearing synth armaments in the Commonwealth, but he figured it was fitting, seeing as he himself was a synth.

His idea of an inside joke.

"Paladin Danse?"

The voice belonged to Preston Garvey. But it was his name married with the rank that caused Danse to halt in his armour adjustments. He made no effort to correct Preston as he turned to allow the Minuteman his attention. Was it wrong that he savoured the lie of omission?

Preston strode toward him with only a flicker of pain in his features; the bullet wound to his chest must be healing quickly for him to even be walking so fluently. "There's something I need to show you, and you might not like it at first. Can I just ask now that you hear me out before you react to it?"

That sounded sinister. Danse gave Preston one of his trademark cocked brows. "...Alright. What is it?"

"Follow me."

Wary, Danse followed as Preston led him across the street toward the rear of the settlement's perimeter, marked by automated turrets and guard posts. There was a sizeable farm shed, alone among a spattering of naked trees. What was peculiar, Danse noticed, was that this shed had no roof. He cocked a brow again, this time in puzzlement.

"You might have realised that the farmhouse has no roof," Preston voiced his thoughts.

"It had occurred to me."

Preston didn't elaborate further, instead just approaching the shed and pushing apart the wooden double-doors. They parted with a rusty whine and creak, the wide shaft of sunlight breaching the interior from the open roof, and revealing what lay inside with perfect clarity. Danse's jaw dropped, then clenched as the implications set in.

"You commandeered a Brotherhood vertibird?"

Preston turned to him in a snap to calm his instant outrage. "It's not what you think. We didn't steal it. Well, not from the Brotherhood, at least. One of our patrols stumbled upon a Dark Blood raider band that had salvaged it and built their outpost around it. We're not sure how they managed to steal it from the Brotherhood. Maybe they sniped out the pilot, and one of the soldiers aboard had managed to land it before he was killed, too. It was near that ArcJet building you and Ilya cleared."

All the pieces suddenly clicked into place. Of course, how could he not have realised it? This was the same vertibird that he, Ilya, Deacon, and Clay-Crawler had made their escape in from their Prydwen heist. Heavily damaged in the escape, Danse had landed it and abandoned it, along with Ilya after their argument.

The memory of that time resurfaced with a stab of guilt, along with the pain of being responsible for the deaths of those soldiers who had pursued them in their escape. Danse swallowed it and pushed it into the dark crevice of his mind, accustomed to doing so.

"How did you move it here?" he asked Preston.

"Nick had a contact he and Ilya met in Far Harbour who was an ex-pilot in some military out west. He said he was a Child of Atom. We offered to pay caps but he insisted on doing it for free if it aided a sister of Atom." Preston shrugged. "I didn't know Ilya was that friendly with the Children of Atom, but her business is her business. Sometimes I think I'd rather not know who or what she gets involved with."

Danse nodded in understanding, though she had mentioned her affiliation with the Children of Atom when the two of them had run into that lone Child of Atom in Sentinel Site Prescott in the Glowing Sea. Right before the discovery of his true identity...

Danse scrunched his brow to move past that reminder, too. "Ex-military from out west, you said?"

"Yeah. You thinking Brotherhood?"

"Perhaps." Or Enclave, Danse lamented privately, suppressing a shiver at the idea of remnants of that corrupt paramilitary still echoing in the shadows of civilisation. Paladin Krieg died for the cause or erasing them from the face of the earth. Danse felt it his duty to secure that cause. "What was his name?"

Preston squinted to rouse his memory. "Richter. But with some cult title... Grand Zealot Richter, that's it."

Danse slotted that name away for later contemplation. Nick would be where the trail began if he decided to chase it up. Refocusing on the here and now, he ran a hand over the copse of his growing beard, which he still needed to tend to. "So why are you showing me this, Preston?"

"Well, we're taking it to the Blood Lands," the Minuteman confessed, gently, anticipating Danse's disapproval. "I know it seems a little foolhardy, which is why we won't use it for combat drops. We can use it more for recon insertions and scouting ops. The reason I'm showing it to you, is because I know we'll need the Brotherhood's approval for airspace and landing clearance. We were hoping you could take this to Maxson and ask his permission on our behalf? You might have a better chance than Ilya, seeing as those two don't seem to get along all that much. Plus, you're the only one here that can fly it..."

Besides the fact that he was exiled from the Brotherhood, if he even piloted the thing at all, it would force him to interact with Brotherhood air control, and would reveal his identity. Trying to wrangle up some form of reply, Danse stalled by striding into the shed and skimming his hand along the vertibird's hull to examine its integrity. They had done a good job of mending it back to operational status. The work of Sturges, no doubt.

The plating was no longer riddled with bullet holes, but replaced and embellished with Minutemen colours of blue, and emblems of a thunderstruck rifle crowned by three stars. The glass canopy, where it had shattered under fire and hailed upon him at the helm, lacerating his face, was now refitted with tinted glass, useful in veiling the pilot from view of snipers. The busted engine turbine had been fully repaired, and the troop load was even retrofitted for med-evac, which had been a design oversight that the Brotherhood never bothered to correct, due to the onboard medical kit in power armour. The Minutemen weren't so abundantly equipped with power armour units, and would need the med-evacs more readily.

He had to admit, the Minutemen had done an outstanding job on the retrofits. Sturges was a great asset to them.

"I take it this means you approve?" Preston spoke up as Danse finished patrolling the vertibird's circumference.

Danse was suddenly aware that he had been smiling in his surveillance, and promptly dipped his mouth back to its stern line. He cleared his throat. "You'll need to clear it with Maxson first before flying it out of here. An unknown bogey on their radars will be shot down without hesitation. I'd have to double back to Sanctuary just to fly it back out."

"Could we radio in and see if Ilya could get us clearance?"

It was a solution, but Danse didn't want to place any more burdens on her shoulders, especially ones pertaining to Maxson. Still, it was the only solution to get clearance. He just needed to think up a viable excuse not to fly it to the Castle himself.

Danse nodded slowly as excuses trickled in to him. "We'll have to. But there's a problem. I wasn't trained to pilot this particular model of vertibird." A plain lie he continued by gesturing to the helm controls, mind grasping for nonsense explanations. "Everything is unfamiliar. I don't recognise the control layout or the instrument configurations. If the hardware is so heavily updated, I can't even imagine the firmware changes."

"Hm." Preston gnawed his cheek in thought. "Couldn't you just improvise? It can't really be that much different, can it?"

Danse went into full-scale hogwash mode, capturing the young officer in a fervent gaze. "Oh yes, it can be, Preston. Assuming control of foreign technology could pose a great danger, even life threatening. I assure you, I'm not over-exaggerating." Oh yes, I am, Danse cringed inwardly. "One wrong switch, Preston, just _one_ , and the engines could overload and combust, resulting in catastrophic damage. Perhaps even in complete meltdown of the fusion core."

The gullible blink Preston responded with confirmed that he had bought it. Danse awed at how easy it had been. Lying to Preston's face was very different from lying to Maxson's face. The outcome was much more satisfying.

"Damn, that does sound like it could be pretty bad..."

"Pretty bad, indeed," Danse concurred.

With gaping eyes, Preston looked longingly at the vertibird, then shrugged in dismal disappointment. "But then, how will we get it to the Blood Lands? We were really pinning a lot on having this with us to give us an edge alongside the Brotherhood and prove our worth."

Swallowing his pride, and the wariness seeded into his gut about the possible Enclave resurgent, Danse heaved a sigh. "Send a runner to Far Harbour. Make contact with this Grand Zealot Richter again, and ask for his co-operation in return for an open trading line with the Minutemen."

"You really think affiliating with the Children of Atom is such a good idea?"

"No, I don't," Danse said frankly, which elicited a troubled frown from Preston. "But if it provides us with a skilled pilot loyal to Ilya, and an alliance with a clan of people who are adept at surviving in highly irradiated zones, like where we're headed, then I think it's worth putting up with their religious tendencies. Agreed?"

Preston didn't voice his agreement, but he didn't voice his disagreement, either. He folded his arms. "Shouldn't we run this by Ilya, first?"

"I'm about to do just that. Hand me your radio."

While Preston jogged off in search of the settlement's fastest runner, Danse followed him with his eyes. There was potential in the young man, but he was quite naive, and more than a little gullible. It surprised him that Preston had allowed him to make such a politically sensitive decision for the Minutemen, especially since he was still believed to be a member of the Brotherhood. Though, it was worth considering that with his past input on Minutemen deployments across the Commonwealth, and his avid support of Ilya, Preston likely trusted his judgement. A change of tune from their prior relations. Danse wasn't entirely sure how he felt about the fact that he had earned Preston's trust. Did the other Minutemen trust him, also?

Among many things, Danse never expected he would be brokering alliances for the Minutemen. How drastically his life had changed in so little time.

Ripping away from his reveries, he called in on Ilya's private radio channel, excitement bubbling through him at the mere thought of hearing her voice again.

But he doused the bubbles immediately. This wasn't a social call to coo upon her of his yearning heart. This was a business call regarding war. A _risky_ business call.

He clicked on the radio. "Harper, do you copy? Over."

There was an extended silence. Danse's ribs vibrated from the organ within. With luck, the static of her radio would mask his voice to any eavesdropping Brotherhood.

...

His receiver burst with static, then the sound of a bulkhead slamming. "Danse?"

Her voice sang through him, and despite his attempts at schooling his emotions, his heart surged with warmth. The only feeling he could compare it with was that moment his homesickness washed away every time he returned to the Prydwen. That was the feeling she gave to him. The feeling of home.

"It's me. Are you alone?"

"Yes. But what the fuck were you thinking? What if someone had recognised your voice?" The distress in her tone was ripe. "What if I'd been in a meeting with Kells or one of the Proctors? You can't risk yourself like this, Danse."

"I know, I'm aware of the risk, but this is important." _I needed to hear your voice._ "I needed to get your approval on something regarding the Minutemen."

There was a tattered sigh on the other end of the channel. "Preston couldn't call in?"

"I made this decision on your behalf, it's only right that I be the one of inform you of it... and it's sensitive to my exile. So, it had to be me to call."

A pause. "You haven't told them." It was spoken with gentle surmise.

"No."

Whatever Ilya's thoughts were on that, she didn't express them. "Okay. What's this decision you want to run by me?"

So he got her up to speed on the situation with the commandeered vertibird, and their need for another pilot so that he could remain anonymous to the Brotherhood and avoid their inspections. She agreed on his call to recruit Grand Zealot Richter to pilot the bird into the Blood Lands for them, and while having some reservations about forming a trade alliance between the Minutemen and the Children of Atom aboard the Nucleus submarine, she agreed that the benefits of their anti-radiation prowess outweighed the risks of their religious influence.

"If they can hold down a peace with Far Harbour and keep to themselves, then they can hold a peace with the Commonwealth," Ilya decided, her voice now ripe with commitment. "They learnt from their mistakes, and I trust them. Let's hope Richter agrees to this, and can talk High Confessor Tektus into agreeing too. He might not be keen on making his people a possible target for the Dark Bloods, though."

Danse couldn't recall her ever mentioning this Tektus. The woman had so many adventures under her belt, it was dizzying to keep up with. But now wasn't the time for a storytelling. "I don't think the Dark Bloods have the manpower to reach all the way to Far Harbour just for shakedown tactics. We'll make sure they won't. It would be foolish of this Tektus to turn down an offer of expanding his message and gaining a larger following. I think it's safe to say we have a new ally in this war."

"I hope so," she sighed. "They have a camp out in the Glowing Sea, between the Commonwealth and the Blood Lands. Not sure if the Brotherhood knows of it. But it could be a good trading outpost for us to use, and a way to relay messages between runners. Can't believe I never thought of this before. Well played. Thanks for setting this up for us." He then heard a soft titter through his receiver. She was chuckling. "You know, I never took you for a bureaucratic creature, Danse."

"Well, I didn't make Paladin just for my combat expertise," he boasted. "I may still have a few surprises you have yet to discover."

"Mhm, really?" the speaker purred in his hand, her voice turning husky on him without warning. "Like what?"

Danse's brain gummed up. This hadn't been his intention. Was this the part where he was supposed to respond with something titillating in order to pique her arousal? The sudden turn of the conversation and the tone of her voice had certainly piqued _him_ , that much was certain. But he was untrained in this field of... talking dirty.

"Uh, well, I, uh..." he stumbled, feeling a burn creep into his cheeks. What on earth could he say that wouldn't sound ridiculous coming from him? _I have a primed payload in my pants?_

There was another chuckle from the radio, before her voice softened. "God, I miss you, Danse."

He sheltered his flustered face into his hand, trying to nurse his embarrassment, before whispering back the affection tugging on his heart, "I miss you too, Ilya... Strange how it feels as though I haven't seen you in years, when it's only been less than a day..."

"It's not strange. Trust me," she responded quietly.

Strange or not, he didn't like the feeling. It reminded him too much of losing Cutler. He then lifted his head with renewed purpose. "But don't worry, I'll be there as soon as possible. How are you doing? Are you safe? Is Maxson treating you well?"

"I'm fine, Danse," Ilya hushed him quickly. "Just make it back to me in one piece, okay?"

He heard the small catch in her voice, of need and despair, and wished he could hold her. Was she really fine? Ilya was a good deceiver, thanks in no small part to Deacon's influence, no doubt. But Danse knew his knight. She was lying to keep him from worrying.

"Ilya," he evoked sternly. "Has Maxson harmed you?"

"No," she insisted, echoing his sternness. "You really think I'd let him touch me and get away with it? He might be bigger than me, but I can hold my own. Maxson is... Maxson. I can handle him."

He knew her better than she thought he did. She was talking tough, and she did that when she was covering a weak point. Danse closed his eyes, tightly, wishing he could do something without blowing his cover.

His brother. His lover. The two most important people left in his world, at each other's throats warring over his fate. It was eating away at him. He knew what the two of them were like together, and that a civil working relationship would be very difficult for them to maintain. Yet, they were outstanding leaders, and both knew the value of restraint. Would they really let their differences escalate beyond heated words and become physically violent?

No, never. They weren't adolescents governed by spurts of uncontrolled aggression and emotion. They would be fine without him to mediate them. Absolutely fine.

Absolutely. Fine.

He wanted to believe himself.

"Ilya... can I just ask that you go easy on him? He's been through a lot, and not just recently. The Brotherhood is everything to him; the people, the beliefs, the future. But he went against all of that, and took a great risk on himself, by letting me live. And now both the Brotherhood and his life could be in danger if my existence is ever discovered. You understand the gravity of this, right?"

She didn't respond for a long moment. Then her voice crackled quietly through the radio. "Yeah... I do."

Danse closed his eyes again, savouring the relief of her admission. He was aware that their opposing regards of Maxson was putting a sour note on their relationship, but this was something he would not compromise on. Evidently, she knew that.

"Thank you, Ilya."

"Now, how are _you_ holding up?" she queried smoothly, and Danse tensed on defence, even while knowing she couldn't see his reaction to pick him apart like she did so well.

"Surviving, though rounding up this lot is taking a considerable toll... they could use some good old-fashioned drill exercises to enforce some discipline."

"Danse, no," Ilya promptly scolded him. "You're not making them do suicide-run drills. I need them intact and combat-ready, not puddles of sweat, or worse."

"Relax," he chuckled softly, "I only kill the intolerable ones."

"...they're all intolerable to you."

"Exactly."

Her resulting giggle gave him a fresh burst of life. A smile warmed his lips, and he gazed into the radio's plastic face as if it were hers, longing to see her sapphires again. Something stirred deep in his gut, and he found himself compelled by some nebulous need, a need to tell her something, yet that something escaped him. It called, but he just couldn't identify exactly what it was. How odd.

Frowning into a shrug, Danse moved on from the alien emotion. "Do you think it possible to ask Maxson's permission for airspace clearance?"

Ilya hummed in thought. "I can ask, but I have a feeling he'll just deny it. Something along the lines of 'compromising Brotherhood air traffic.' Any excuse not to give me more power."

"He's only threatened by the idea of giving you more power because you antagonise him. Show him that you're on his side, propose the idea in a civil manner, and you'll have a better chance of winning his approval. Do you know the phrase, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend?'"

"Yeah. We'd throw that around on the Canadian military back in pre-war. Just for shits and giggles."

"Well keep it in mind the next time the two of you are squabbling."

" _Squabbling?_ " she regurgitated on him, tone incredulous. "The day Maxson and I _squabble_ is the day this alliance becomes an actual alliance."

He trapped a groan in his throat. "That bad?"

"I'm just saying that things are personal between us now since... your exile." She sounded as though she regretted worrying him. "Think of us like a brother and sister that can't stand each other, but we have to co-operate or the big happy family will fall apart."

Now she was plastering humour over it. Danse clutched the radio with useless intent and gnawed his lip. To think of the two of them as warring siblings... he knew it wasn't that simple between them. He still remembered the slip of jealousy pass over Arthur's eyes when he had discovered the intimacy between Ilya and himself. Whether or not Ilya herself had noticed it was unclear.

"Ilya, please just be careful."

"Yeah I know," she whined tiredly, sounding more like a disgruntled girl than a business savvy woman. "Don't piss off the most powerful man in the world, got it. Any other tips on dealing with him?"

"...Don't curse at him."

"But where's the fun in that?" she chimed roguishly, and Danse wasn't so sure she was just kidding around.

Oh, hell. Poor Arthur. He really must have his hands full, Danse realised with a speck of regret. Had he made the right choice by insisting Ilya return to rekindle the alliance? Were the wounds still too raw?

"Hey, I should go. Groves has me under her whip and moving mountains. Keep this channel open and I'll contact you after meeting with Maxson at midday. If you're out of radio range, then I'll fire a flare at night to give you his answer on that vertibird clearance. Blue for yes, red for no."

Danse nodded, pulling on a sheet of steel to cover the disappointment of having to keep radio silence until then. "Copy that. See you at the Castle soon. And be careful. Please."

"I'll be good. Promise. You be careful too, Danse. For me." Her final words hung over him like a damp cloud.

* * *

Clicking off the Minuteman radio, Ilya stuffed it back into the utility pouch on her hip and sighed into the winds from the Prydwen's foredeck. Her fingers then sought out the holotags stashed down the neck of her uniform, pulling them free by the chain and then holding them flush to her chest.

 _Alone._

She banished the whisper. Hearing Danse's voice had been a brief haven of escape. At first she had been furious to hear his call as she walked the Prydwen, fear of his exposure shooting down her spine and sending her fleeing out to the privacy of the foredeck. He shouldn't have risked himself like that... but selfishly, she was glad he did. Even if he said it was a business call and not a personal check-in, she knew the latter had been his hidden motive.

It was for that very reason that she kept from telling him Maxson's plans to deploy by nightfall. Danse was already worked up enough about being separated from her, and if she told him he only had by tonight to reach her, then she knew he would come charging through the Wastes like a madman and likely get himself killed. She needed him alive more than she needed him at her side. If she couldn't think of a way to stall Maxson, and Danse didn't reach her before she left the Commonwealth, then at least she knew he would still be alive. She would just have to survive the war without him.

Ingram greeted her down at the airport as though nothing had happened since they last met. Her way of coping with it, Ilya thought. Her and Danse hadn't seemed that close, but Ilya had occasionally seen them sharing a morning coffee together in the mess, or sharing huddled and almost secretive chats over power armour modifications, and Ingram had always spoken highly of the paladin. Whether or not the proctor was affected by Danse's 'betrayal' was packed deep under layers of grease and sarcasm.

By the time Ilya had cleansed and resupplied the maintenance bay with war prep, then reported in with Knight-Sergeant Gavil and the logistics staff to update them on the dent she had made in the supply depot down at the airport, she was not only hungry, but late for muster at the armoury.

Proctor Teagan let it slide. His wily eyes smiled at her appearance, though his mouth kept to a guarded line. Ilya mimicked him. No one really seemed to know how to treat her. And she really had no idea what everyone's true feelings were on Danse's fate. The civil unrest was congested by martial order.

"Harper. It's good to see you back aboard," Teagan greeted simply.

"Good to be back," she returned, playing her part. The last time she had seen Teagan was to arm up with Danse before their drop into the Glowing Sea. Despite the fact that they had both been hungover and wracked with sexual tension from their escapades the night before, the comparison was almost eerie with the stark absence of the paladin. Her heart quavered.

 _Stop being sentimental. He's alive, that's what matters._

At her easy tone, Teagan dropped his guard and leaned an elbow on his stall bench. "Rough business with Paladin Danse. To think he was a synth that whole time... doesn't bear thinking about it, really."

"No. It doesn't," Ilya replied coldly. Her jaded assassin facade allowed her to play it cool with Danse's death, but that didn't mean she was up for chatting it over. Teagan was definitely braver than Cade had been, that was for sure.

The U-turn of her attitude warned Teagan off the topic, and he straightened up again. "Here for your procurement?"

That was more like it. Ilya confessed a grin. "I'm here for some firepower."

Reporting to Proctor Quinlan was just as vexing, though he was brash in his opinion of the matter. "Shame about Paladin Danse, really. He was one of our best. But needless to say he was a traitor and deserved no mercy of yours. We're in your debt, Knight. I only wish that his remains could have been brought back for dissection and study instead of being incinerated. But no matter. Senior Scribe Neriah has plenty of synth units in her possession already. Danse, or rather, M7-97, was just unique in its human-like appearance and behaviour."

 _It._ Ilya moulded her features in place as Quinlan droned on.

"The early infiltration Gen 3 synths are rare for us to get our hands on, especially since they possess more human-like characteristics in order to assimilate into society on a more permanent timescale, such as physical ageing and neural degeneration, which were revoked in the later versions that are still in development. For continuity reasons, I assume. The Institute couldn't take over the Commonwealth if their sterile synths aged but couldn't reproduce."

His scientific drawl took Ilya from mounting fury to curious focus. She hadn't given much thought to Danse's age since discovering his identity, specifically if he _could_ age being a synth. He hadn't brought up his concerns on it either, though he hadn't talked much about being a synth at all, she reminded herself.

Ilya brought her thumb to her tooth to ponder. "So you think he might have been part of some prototype infiltration line? Designed specifically to integrate into human society long-term?"

"Precisely," Quinlan nodded, adjusting his spectacles in thought. "Thanks to the data you recovered from your reconnaissance of the Institute, we know that the primary Gen 3 models are designed without the programming to simulate the aging process. But the earlier models that infiltrated the Capital Wasteland were able to move through society unnoticed for decades. These earlier models were clearly designed for long-term infiltration as the Institute gathered intelligence on the state of civilisation in preparation for their wide-scale Gen 3 project. If M7-97 infiltrated us back then, then it must have been one of these prototype models."

"But if he infiltrated us in the Commonwealth, then he's probably one of the later models," Ilya deduced, blocking the pangs that came with thinking of the real Danse being replaced and likely killed by the Institute, or the reality of him being unable to age.

"Yes. Designed more for temporary infiltration. Unfortunately with its body disposed of, there's no way to know."

 _It._ That word continued to ride everyone's lips. Some slipped up here and there and referred to him as a man, but the disassociation was setting in thickly. Ilya scrunched her fists but kept her cool.

"The data didn't have a record of his origin?" she asked, a flare of hope igniting.

"Disappointingly, no." Her hope deflated. "The data you recovered isn't a total archive of the Institute's history. To compile such sensitive records in one data packet would be counter-productive and foolish. Our own archives are logged and filed in segregation to prevent full infiltration. Though I imagine M7-97 has already extracted all of our intelligence for the Institute during its time with us," he concluded with a leer.

 _He wasn't a spy, you fuckwit._ This aging situation didn't make his past any less elusive, but Danse needed to know this. Ilya just feared how it would affect him.

"Now, onto the reason you're here," Quinlan snapped to business, flicking through his clipboard with a lanky finger. "Let's sign you up for your research patrol rotation and get you scheduled in. This will have to be _after_ your campaign in the Rad Lands is concluded, of course. So I'll mark you down as 'pending.' Once we slot you into a squad and location, you can proceed to report to Elder Maxson. No doubt the two of you have much to discuss."

 _Much to squabble, yes..._

* * *

The sun was nearing its peak by the time the civilians and other miscellaneous crew members were ready and gathered by the bridge, and Danse's anxiety was chipping away at him, sliver by sliver. Every second they wasted was precious.

"Got all the food and goodies we can carry spread out between us all, including snacks for the road," Deacon reported much too merrily.

Like most everyone else, his travel pack was chock-full, and weapons holstered on either side of its bulk. Strong carried an especially large load, Codsworth was strapped up in a specially designed pack, and even Dogmeat was adorned in a canine combat vest complete with ballistic fibre weaving and utility pouches. Clay-Crawler had been surprised with his newly repaired and upgraded power armour, Deacon covering his eyes and walking him to the armour station as though it were a birthday gift. The raider's reaction surpassed delight and entered the disturbing realms of psychotic glee, complete with salivating and bouncing, and plenty of it. Danse had only stood back to observe the spectacle while shaking his head.

So the weedy raider pest gets new power armour, while he is left with second-grade scrap traded by who-knew how many hands across the Commonwealth. If he had his power armour, he could have stormed through the wastes a lone wolf of vengeance and reached Ilya by now. Infuriating.

All crew members, even the ones Danse considered non-combatants, were clad in various forms of armour kits. He had watched from a safe distance as even Piper, Ilya's eccentric reporter friend from Diamond city, armoured up in camo-painted combat armour. To his eye, she looked utterly ridiculous, and he made sure to share his opinion.

"Exercise extreme caution out there, Piper. The Commonwealth is hazardous for civilians."

To this, Piper had added a sharp glare to her armoury. "I can handle myself, soldier boy."

Danse hadn't appreciated that. Civilians...

Only Preston was spared a burdening load, due to his recent bullet wound. It was only because of regular stimpak treatments that he was up on his feet and able to move with relative ease. His refusal to be left behind was absolute. Though Danse still considered him a liability.

Hancock adjusted the rim of his rawhide hat to ward off the sunlight he despised so much, black eyes squinted. "What're we waitin' for? Let's get this freakshow on the road."

Danse gave a curt nod and turned to set out, but was stopped as Sturges cleared his throat. He grew an uncomfortable look as everyone gave him their attention.

"Look, I—well, _we—_ " he began in his distinct southern accent, gesturing to the other settlers gathered behind him to see the crew off, "—just wanted to wish you all the best of luck out there, and to say that ya'll are mighty brave for putting yourselves at risk for folk like us. If it weren't for people like you, this settlement would be long gone by now, either pillaged or just burned to the ground." The burly mechanic reached back to rub the back of his neck in an unconscious show of discomfort. "So... yeah. The Minutemen have really come through, thanks in no small part to Ilya and you guys. Kinda wish I could have said goodbye to her in person, but it is what it is. Tell her we all pass on our thanks and good lucks."

"Will do, Sturges," Hancock assured smoothly, tipping his hat to accept the gratitude. "Keep safe while we're gone, ya hear? We don't wanna have to come back to find you lot dead. It would make for one hell of a vengeance hunt, don't get me wrong, but the Commonwealth would be lesser for your loss."

"And then who would we get to fix us up more vertibirds?" MacCready added with a cheeky grin.

"Aye, and keep us drowned in moonshine!" Cait bellowed, elbowing the air toward the now-blushing Sturges. There was a round of soft chuckles. Danse had been in the dark on that slip of intel, it seemed.

"Well I'm sure if you ask real nice, the Brotherhood would lend you more, both vertibirds and moonshine," Sturges responded, and MacCready snorted loudly in denial. Sturges' gaze then flicked to Danse. "And, tell your folk they have our gratitude, too. Your Maxson? Tell him we appreciate what he's doing for the Commonwealth, even if we complain about him sending his people out to tax our crop yield..."

"I'll... pass it along," Danse replied, shoving down the punch to his gut. His swept his gaze over the mass of civilians standing before him and Ilya's crew of freedom fighters. They were all regarding him smiles and nods of appreciation, gratitude, respect... honour. It struck him in a way he struggled to admit to himself. Since enlisting with the Brotherhood, he pledged his life into service to protect people like these, to ensure the future of mankind, yet he hadn't spared the time of day to recognise them as anything more than sheep.

They included the decrepit and dazed Mama Murphy with her mysterious Sight, whom Danse had the niggling suspicion was always high on chems to some degree, the bitter Macy Long, whom had what Ilya called a permanent 'resting-bitch-face,' the nervous and mousy Jun Long, whom liked to complain about his life rather than do something about bettering it, and dozens of other settlers that Danse hadn't bothered to notice.

He felt... ashamed...

Was this his atonement?

By Danse's lead, they set out from Sanctuary, locked and loaded, ready for war. Nothing, raider, nor mutant, nor beast, impeded their march. Despite Danse's reluctance to be a part of something outside the Brotherhood, they were a small army.

* * *

 **A/N:** Danse's rather condescending comment to Piper is in-game. He'll say that if you swap him for her. The ass, lol.

-If you played Far Harbour, you might have recognised Grand Zealot Richter. I wanted to give him a cameo, just coz I liked him. He was an interesting character with a shady backstory, and he reminded me of Maxson for some reason. Probably the beard and the slick haircut... lol. He mentioned he was recon in the Enclave, not necessarily air force, but that's a bit of canon I was willing to sidestep. I might plan more for him later in the story, guess I'll see where it goes.

That could tie in with a cameo for Old Longfellow, too. I also wanted to incorporate Ada from Automatron, and Gage from Nuka World somehow. Will need to do some brainstorming on that one, since it's been mentioned in-story that Ilya and Danse killed all the gangs there... And X6-88, I haven't forgotten about him... ;) I'm sure Danse would love to meet him some day. Tehe.


	57. Highway to Hell

**Highway to Hell**

* * *

The Commonwealth journey was smooth and free of migraines. Danse could hardly believe it. The small rag-tag army following his step meshed into a reckless yet effective platoon, each member complimenting the next with specific strengths to supplement weaknesses. Though a little rough around the edges, it was evident that they had spent much time working together in defence of the Minutemen settlements, allowing them to operate as a tight-knit unit. And while, yes, they were dysfunctional with chatter, banter, laughter, and bickering, when danger lurked near they snapped into survival mode and moved as one machine.

Danse was impressed, despite himself. He would never tell them this, though. There was always room for improvement, and he was constantly picking apart their positions, advising on maneuvering tactics, tightening flanks, assigning support roles to cover holes in moments of live fire, but they were still a formidable force against bands of raiders or hordes of ferals.

Yet they wouldn't stand a chance against a tide of super mutants, or a platoon of highly trained Brotherhood soldiers, Danse knew. The mutants would just plough through with tenacity and superior strength, and the Brotherhood would overwhelm with unparalleled training and experience; the holes in their tactics would be picked apart and torn to shreds. Not that he would ever let it come to a firefight against the Brotherhood. He let himself mourn the loss of his steel brethren for a brief few stretches of travel, then he shrugged it off again and pushed on, pulling the small army with him.

They managed to reach the outskirts of Boston before one of them began to whine. Danse knew it had been inevitable. He was actually astonished they had lasted this long.

It was Clay-Crawler, lumbering along in his savage power armour. "Hungry...Tired... Not tasted blood in long time... Need blood."

It was a monumental effort for Danse to repress his superiority complex from barking at the raider to 'shut up and haul ass,' as Paladin Krieg had done many times to his squad. Nobody liked a whiner.

"I hate to break it to you, buddy, but I have a hunch that the blood you crave is a placebo," Deacon counselled while snacking on a mutfruit.

"What is placebo?"

"It just means you're bat-shit crazy. But I wouldn't stress too much about it." Deacon took another sloppy bite from his mutfruit and said nothing more, while the raider tilted a befuddled head down at him.

There was a gargled simper from Hancock's direction somewhere back in the formation. "Little man, if you want something real to crave, I got just the thing. Say the word and I'll let you have a free sample, on the house."

"Hancock, no," Piper shot down from the formation's other flank. "He's just a kid."

"C'mon, doll. Like Deacon just said, he's already bat-shit crazy. What's a little more?"

"Let him have some of that shite and he'd go full-blown bonkers and murder the lot of us, mark me words," Cait joined Piper's side.

"Are we referring to the use of recreational chems?" Curie jumped in, concern marring her delicate features as she clung to the straps of her hefty travel pack. "I am not so good with these... innuendoes yet, but if so, then might I recommend Clay-Crawler avoid the abuse of chemical inhibitors. He is very young, and still so very feeble."

"See? Even the doc said no," Cait warned Hancock, who appeared taken aback by the mass of opposition. "I'm not lettin' you get yer slimy fingers on Clay, too. So just forget about it."

The Ghoul recoiled in slight amusement. "Damn, what is this, femme-fatale-attack-on-Hancock day? Clay, you got somethin' on me?"

"'Course he does, just look at that adorable face of his," Deacon threw into the mix, drawing glares from the defensive women. "The little man's a pussy magnet."

Cait's glare sharpened to a fine point. "Go boil your egg-for-a-head in a smelter, Deacon."

MacCready broke out into snorts of boyish giggles, while Deacon managed to control his.

"Hey, don't hate on the egg."

Danse muted out their banter as his thoughts wandered. Cait's choice of words was suspicious. Who else had Hancock's apparent charm steered down the road to chems? Cait had become vocally opposed to chems since she made roots at Sanctuary and took up a more active role in supporting the Minutemen, so she wouldn't have meant herself. He did a quick imaginative head-count of his companions. MacCready seemed grungy enough to dabble in such practices. But... the most likely candidate was Deacon, with his blasé junkie manner. Cait had even commented that he 'came across as a chem-head' back during their heist planning. It wouldn't surprise him.

"I ain't some slap-happy chem dealer," Hancock jumped to his own defence as the banter snowballed on. "I don't go giving handouts without looking after my own, and I know my limits when I've been on one too many trips all at once."

By 'trips,' Danse gathered he meant chem sessions. Wastelander slang...

"That goes for the people I lend out to, as well," Hancock husked on in his Ghoul voice. "It takes a certain kind of... finesse, to keep it on a leash, but I've lived long enough to get the hang of it. Clay would be safe in my hands."

Danse couldn't keep quiet on this any longer, his moral stance was clawing for release. "If you're talking about preventing addiction, then you're just being foolish. Chems are not to be compared with the recreational use of alcohol. There's no fine line between leisure and dependency. Chems are highly addictive after just one use. The fact that you can't admit that just means you're in denial."

"Nobody asked you, crew-cut."

"Nobody asked Clay-Crawler, either," Danse shot back, fingers already digging imprints in his rifle's grip. "Do you really want to be responsible for forcing this decision upon him?"

A disgruntled growl poured from the Ghoul's throat, and Danse could feel those inky eyes burning holes in the back of his head. "Nobody's forcing anything on anyone. I'm just laying out the option. The kid's had one fuckery of a life and I'm offering a little harmless escape. Since when did you give two shits about him, anyway? Why don't you just go back to being a robot and keeping your self-righteous nose to yourself."

Danse rotated on a sharp heel and shouldered his laser rifle in one fluid snap, trooping past those in his way to zero in on the Ghoul. Hancock's teeth bared to meet the challenge, his shotgun pushed over his shoulder to ready for a man-to-man exchange.

A mechanical arm barred them from collision. "Cut it out, the both of you!" Nick's lucid eyes were like incendiary lasers, swishing between the two of them. "At this rate we'll end up tearing ourselves apart from infighting and never make it to Ilya in one piece."

Nick's sheer strength had halted Danse's momentum with such ease that he stood stunned for a moment, though it was a brief effect. He shrugged away the abominable arm across his chest, features twisted with repugnance. "Don't touch me, synth!"

Nick confronted his ferocity head on, pallid face pinched into a stunned glare. "I don't know what the heck is up with you since showing up in Sanctuary, Danse, but you need to take a step back and take a good long look at your attitude. We're all in the same boat here, aren't we? But if you still think of yourself as superior, then I question why you're even here at all and not back with the Brotherhood. We're more than capable of reaching the Castle ourselves."

Danse maintained the twist of disgust in his features, but the old synth's words hit both hard and hollow to his ears. Why was he here with them? Because he had nowhere else to be, nowhere else to go. He had no people now.

Hovering in his realisation, steamed with rage but on the brink of wallowing, Danse could feel Nick's mechanised eyes peeling away his layers. But he held the glare, unable to surrender his pride.

Nodding at the stalemate, Nick averted his eyes to the snarling Ghoul held at bay by his other arm. "And you, Mayor Hancock, do I really need to chew you out for being disruptive? I know your dislike for each other is inbred, so to speak, but you could have handled this a whole lot better."

"Handling a town, and handling a Brotherhood bigot,"—he narrowed charcoal eyes at Danse—"are two very different things, Valentine. There are a lot of nasty things that go on behind closed doors to keep Goodneighbour in check."

"Maybe so, but this isn't the dark alleys of Goodneighbour, this is _supposed to be_ an allied movement working toward the same goal. You'd have us act like a pack of raider hooligans throwing punches at the first sign of a disagreement."

Hancock shifted his weight for a contemplative moment, his metal armour resonating on light impacts where plating scraped together. "Hmph. Alright, you've made your point, Nick," he conceded, though his eyes stayed on Danse. "I'll tone it down a notch. But only if he lays off with the high and mighty bullshit."

Nick slanted him a check. "Danse?"

"If it'll keep him from turning feral, then agreed."

Hancock growled at that, and Nick rolled his neon eyes. "God help us all," he muttered before removing himself from the situation.

They didn't even make it much further before the young raider broke the ice again.

"Still tired and hungry."

Danse thought he was about to grind his teeth down to bone dust right before Nick handled it.

"We're almost to Diamond City, kid. Then we can take a breather and tend to our rumbling tummies. Well, you lot can. Codsworth and I can watch awkwardly from the sidelines."

"Splendid," the robot butler rejoiced in sarcasm.

"Can you hang on for just a few more blocks, Clay?"

The raider moaned like a spoilt child, even stomping louder in his armour, but relented.

With Nick deciding that Diamond City would be their first checkpoint, Danse gradually allowed himself to fall back in formation, eventually taking the rear guard off Strong's hands, who took the chance to send him a black look before passing on ahead. How Ilya had managed to win such loyalty from a super mutant, Danse wasn't sure he even wanted to know. The only thing he could recall the mutant hankering for was this 'milk of human kindness,' which Ilya had promised to help him find one day. Wait...

Alarming images blazoned through his head, and he blinked them away hurriedly. He really, _really_ hoped that his imagination was just running wild on him...

Great steel.

Saving him from his thoughts, Deacon dropped back to match his step, sniper rifle draped leisurely in his arms by its shoulder sling. Danse's first premonitions were of the spy rubbing salt on his wounds that Nick had knocked him down a peg, but he was wrong.

"You need to tell them."

It was dangerously close to gentle. Deacon hadn't even met his eye as he spoke. He just kept his sunglasses trained ahead.

"I know," Danse murmured quietly. Dread surged in him at the very thought of revealing his identity, at what they might think of him, how they would treat him differently, ridicule him on the irony of it all and his hypocritical ideals, or worse, pity him. But it had to be done. They would blow his cover with the Brotherhood, and they would be suspicious of him avoiding the Brotherhood at all times. "I'm just not sure how to."

"Yeah, it's not something you just blurt out over coffee and a donut."

"Not helping."

"Sorry."

The dilemma grated on his nerves in silent step as the crew approached the city ruins of Boston. The evening sun cast shadow-play off the perished buildings, where broken columns of light uncloaked the dust in the air. The scent of urban decay filled Danse's nose, bringing back memories of his time here on recon before the Prydwen sailed into the sky. The memories carried the pain of loss, the deaths of his squadmates always draped around his conscience like a pendent from his neck, but the memories also brought light and a trail of hope. He first met Ilya here.

It seemed loss was a precursor to new hope, a constant pattern in his life.

The city scrim was quieter than he remembered, absent of the overhead prowl from a vertibird's engines or the distant gunplay of Brotherhood patrols reining in the colourful community. Elder Maxson must have pulled the majority of his forces back to base, meaning there wasn't much time left before deployment. His heart kicked in his chest. They were in a race against time.

"Come on," he stirred the wandering platoon. "Let's pick up the pace."

"What's the big rush?" Piper passed back to him with an easy tone. "It's not like the Brotherhood's gonna leave without you, right? Aren't you one of the big-shot officers and all?"

Danse made no response. There was no way around it, he had to tell them. Keep pushing for speed without a valid explanation and he would continue to instigate ill wills from them all and jeopardise team cohesion.

The deeper they moved into the city ruins, the more they came across well-fortified Minutemen barricades and checkpoints. It seemed Maxson and Harper's deployment plans had gone ahead without a hitch, the Minutemen filling in for the Brotherhood's coming absence. Many of the militia's infantry and checkpoints were reinforced with Brotherhood tech—laser turrets and rifles, combat armour in prime condition, even a few plasma rifles, though he knew they would have been instructed to reserve those only as a contingency resource. Plasma armaments were well sought after and extremely rare.

At last, Minutemen patrols dwindled in place of Diamond City security forces, flanking the dingy streets and calling out greetings to either Nick or Piper, both apparently well-known residents. Clay-Crawler gaped up at the surrounding buildings with child-like wonder. Strong received a few sideways looks and slack jaws. Cait persisted to flirt with every decent looking guard. Deacon removed his wig and changed up his clothing to take on a new persona. Curie beamed in delight at the chance to witness the thriving heart of the Commonwealth. Hancock took some derogatory remarks from Ghoul-hating citizens but dished it back out all the same. Codsworth complained about the mess and how his butler senses were going awry. MacCready eyed the guards or any shifty figures. Dogmeat was showered in affectionate petting. Preston tipped his cowboy hat and dropped the Minutemen name into every greeting he could.

Danse pulled his hood down further and shrank into the backdrop.

The markets were alive with people. He stood aimlessly amongst the throng of daily life while the crew discussed their activities, a static object surrounded by a shifting current of time. The rich smell of cooking food wafted through the air, drawing his eye to the noodle stall at the heart of the market. Citizens from all walks of the wastes were lined up waiting to be served by the protectron server. Wary eyes snagged on him and then darted away again, nervous or intimidated. He dipped his head lower, but observed them closely. Most were thin, dirty, scraggy. Even in the _Great Green Jewel,_ as they called it, these people were eking out lives fettered by malnutrition and poor sanitation.

The cascade effect of children's laughter tumbled to his ear, and he watched with interest as they raced around the markets and scaled the shanty rooftops, innocent in their glee, free of the troubles life bore with responsibility.

He was going to war for people like these, to secure their future, their freedom, to preserve their way of life and achieve every scrap of victory he possibly could, if only to improve their lives even in the slightest way and keep humanity climbing for survival. That was who he was. He knew nothing else. He would gladly spill his own blood for these people and that cause.

But would they honour the spilling of his blood, if they knew what he really was? Beneath the bustle of this unified community, there was the ugly paranoia of synth infiltration. He could taste the tension as eyes shifted from one set to another, scurrying for clues or tells. It infested their daily lives and followed everyone here like shadows. The fear was like a plague.

But the thing was, it wasn't an irrational fear. Synth infiltration was a very real threat. And if his identity was revealed, he had no doubts that he would be mobbed and torn to shreds, perhaps even literally.

Should he feel obsolete going to war to fight for their freedom? Should he feel offended that the risk to his life would not be respected or honoured? Glory honoured sacrifice. It's what the Brotherhood taught him. But he would have no glory.

Immersed in the maze of his new mind, Nick's voice broke him free of it, the path to its exit rushing at him with renewed anxiety. He had to tell them. Even if they would shun him too, like everyone else had.

Nick was mentioning that he had some business to take care of at his detective agency, Piper said she wanted to spend some time with her little sister, Nat, Hancock wanted to hire a messenger to run back to Goodneighbour and pass on some instructions and a final word to his bodyguard, Fahrenheit, in case he never made it back, and Deacon mumbled something about meeting with a contact to pass on some gossip, no doubt Railroad related, so everyone was about to disperse and go about refuelling at the noodle stall or doing some last minute supply shopping. Danse sucked up a ragged breath and lifted his head.

"I have something I need to share with you all, before we reach the Castle." Everyone came to a halt and turned in curiosity. This was it. There was no going back now. He shifted on the spot with discomfort. "Is there somewhere more secluded we could go? This is... of a very personal nature."

A moment of silence, then Piper shrugged. "My shack's just over there. Come on, just everyone promise not to break anything, okay?"

So they all filed inside Piper's shack, though the homely confines did nothing to ease everyone's discomfort at being huddled at such close quarters. Danse took up a position leaning against one of the walls where everyone could see him, folding his arms as he pondered on how to begin. This took a considerable time, and nobody dared to rush him.

Deacon was squirming in his seat, apparently unsettled by the dragging silence. "So who's up for coffee and donuts?" he uttered out of nowhere, darting out of the chair to make for the door.

"Deacon," Danse called in a low warning, and the spy halted before he reached the door. "Sit."

Deacon sat.

No more delay. There was no graceful way to disclose this, so Danse plunged right in, recounting events with a pained grimace he wasn't aware he had been wearing until his mouth stopped and there were no more words to empty himself of.

Silence reigned and solidified. Danse kept his gaze firmly fixed to the ground, accepting the silent shunning with a nod.

Hancock's leathers stretched as he lifted a leg to rest his ankle over his knee, elbow placed back on the chair's backrest. "Well, now it all suddenly makes sense."

Everyone raised brows in his direction.

"Why you act the way you do."

"Meaning?" Danse dug with an edged tone. The room tensed.

Hancock swept the faces staring at him, shrewd calculus, then shrugged far too casually for Danse's liking. "Look, don't take this the wrong way—but knowing you, you will anyway. But you've always been a bit of a wind-up toy soldier, is all I'm sayin'."

Danse stared. Everyone stared. Hancock hummed in afterthought.

"What? Too soon?"

Danse was _not_ in the mood for this. His temper was already strained to its absolute limitations with being so far from Ilya while she balanced the world on her broken shoulders. If he didn't vacate this shack immediately, the Ghoul may end up as a vapour stain on the wall by his rifle's laser.

"Zip it, Hancock," he heard Nick's voice over his own stomping progress for the door. "Danse, wait."

Recycling a taut sigh, Danse waited, fists coiled.

"None of us care who or what you are, not when it really comes down to it. Sure, I won't skirt the obvious fact that your views are a little extreme to some of us, and many of us haven't seen eye-to-eye with you, but everyone here knows you're a good man on the base level, who's willing to risk his life for the greater good. In fact, you'd be more willing than any of us here. That's all that matters to us, right everyone?"

There were unanimous vouches of agreement, some clear, some mumbled.

"And note that I said 'man,' not machine, as you called yourself. Because a machine doesn't have its own views and philosophies on life, it has only what it was programmed to be. Take that from a fellow synth with his own philosophies, too. I'm still a man. An old and busted up one, but the people here in Diamond City could see me through the mangled synth casing. Hancock's a man, and he's a Ghoul."

"Old and busted up as well," Hancock volunteered. "But all man on the inside... and the ladies know it."

"Still a rabble-rouser and a right smart-aleck, mind you," Nick taunted from the cranny of his mouth, though it was for everyone to hear. Hancock only snickered in agreement.

"My point being, is that you being a synth doesn't change anything."

Boots touched down on the flooring, and a chair was shifted back as someone rose to their feet. "Damn straight," Danse heard Preston declare. "And we'd be proud to follow you into battle. You and Ilya make one hell of a team. The Minutemen would be honoured to welcome you aboard and accept your leadership."

Moved, Danse turned from the door to brave the panorama of eyes on him. Leadership of the Minutemen wasn't his agenda, although he realised he had naturally taken on that role in serving as the impromptu platoon leader. Leadership was in his blood, but the Minutemen weren't his to lead. They were Ilya's. The freedom fighting ideology resonated with her more than with him; his Brotherhood doctrine had a broader, harsher scope of realism and the ends justifying the means, if on a tight leash that preserved honour. He would sacrifice everyone in this room if it meant protecting humanity.

Ilya would not. She would die a martyr of her morals. That was what the Minutemen needed in their leader.

Danse may think the Minutemen way naive, but he respected it all the same. That was why he would fight with them.

And now he realised that in retrospect of his regard of the Minutemen, these people following his lead across the Commonwealth thought the exact same of him. They may think of him as prejudiced and extreme, or a hypocritical synth who still believed in the very people who exiled him, but they respected him all the same.

He nodded his gratitude. "Thank you."

* * *

Their rest-stop in Diamond City came to an end as they hit the road again, Danse on point. He may have been imagining it, but they seemed to move with more purpose now, and his orders were received without the previous tension. Nick, Hancock, and Preston all shouldered the weight of acting as his de-facto lieutenants due to their leadership capabilities, dividing his commands into sections when he called for a scouting unit or an area sweep.

The journey to the Castle was proving great practice for them to gel as a fireteam, and he was feeling more and more confident that when the real action began deep in the desert of the Blood Lands, he would be commanding an effective little war machine at Ilya's side.

But as the Prydwen drew nearer along the skyline, every step he took engraved the ground with his dread. To be so near the home he was exiled from, to walk in the very midst of his former people, hidden in plain sight, it was a dangerous game he would be playing. But nothing in comparison to what lay beyond in the Blood Lands.

He was on a highway to hell, but his slice of heaven was within that hell. He just had to get to her before it was too late.

* * *

 **A/N:** Cue the war drums, please. I've been wanting to get these guys into a force under Danse's lead for so fucking long now. I also had the highway to hell song by AC/DC stuck in my head thinking of the concept of this chapter, lol.


	58. He's a Demon, He's a Devil, He's a Doll

**He's a Demon, He's a Devil, He's a Doll**

* * *

 _Time to squabble_ , Ilya chimed to herself with a bracing sigh. She stepped neatly onto the Prydwen's observation bridge as the elder brooded out the viewport, noting that the command deck was clear of guards or even maintenance crew. It unsettled her.

The memory of their last meeting on this very spot stole over her for a breath. He had stood before her, a demon in man-skin, dropping the bombshell that had shaken her world and brought Danse's world crashing down around him. The elder had been poised to execute her at the faintest sniff of her betrayal, but upon witnessing the truth of the shock in her eyes, he had offered her his comfort, even intending to embrace her as she had wilted in despair. She still remembered the flicker of his touch on her arm...

Compassion had still existed deep in there somewhere, straining out like unripe, tenderfoot shoots through the inhabitable soil of demon-skin.

But that had been before he held Danse at gunpoint with the intention of murdering him in cold blood, even after hearing from Danse's own lips that he had not, and would never, betray him or the Brotherhood. But the radical extremist standing before her was just a rotten machine to the core where compassion was manufactured for control.

Well, he wasn't going to control her.

Ilya leered at the earthy leather valley of Maxson's brown battlecoat as his back greeted her, in his _charming_ custom. Her final step reverberating on the deck triggered a small tensing of the muscles beneath the leather, and the hands that were clasped leisurely behind his back. His thoughts on their meeting must have resembled hers.

"Reporting as ordered, Elder."

He turned, eyeing her with those icy orbs. One look at his beard made her hands itch to yank it and strangle him with it. At least she had gotten the pleasure of breaking his nose. His bridge appeared firmly reset, but bruising loitered beneath his skin to mark the delighted occasion. He also sported a nice dark shiner on his jawline that even the forestry on his face couldn't hide. Hah. She gave herself an imaginative pat on the back.

Maxson endured her covert satisfaction. "Before we continue, I want to make one thing clear. This conversation will be the last time we speak about Danse. As far as the Brotherhood of Steel is concerned, he's dead. Do you understand?"

That explained why they were alone up here. Maxson's tone was wary, though it didn't lack its threatening barb. Anything less would be disappointing coming from him.

"You're not going to have him killed behind my back, are you?" Ilya was just as wary, narrowing suspicious eyes at him. They were both at each other's mercy in this dirty little secret, and they both knew it.

Maxson drew his brow in offense. "I'm a man of my word, Knight. If he remains invisible to the Brotherhood of Steel, he has nothing to fear."

It sounded sincere. He wasn't a dirty player by nature, unlike herself, though he was getting a feel for it since dealing with her. But Ilya had no illusions that if Maxson ever realised Danse was with her, he would just slap them both on the hand and then ship Danse safely back home. No. Maxson would kill Danse in an instant. He gave them _one_ chance.

But Danse was adamant to protect her. Both men were just stubborn steel fucks, as far as she was concerned.

In her silent scrutiny, Maxson continued, speaking with precise clarity. "Of course, Danse's execution creates a missing link in our chain of command. That _traitor_ held quite an important position with us. I'm certain that you'll make a fine replacement."

Ilya zoned in on his meaning. He was promoting her? She hadn't seen that coming.

"His quarters and all his possessions are now yours, including his personal suit of power armour. Congratulations, Paladin." That last formality was spoken with extra weight, each syllable crisp and deliberate. Was this a bribe to keep her complaisant?

The elder locked a fist to his chest to salute her, but Ilya was a frozen mannequin. The gall of the offer was sickening, that she would just take all of Danse's belongings, including his rank, and not feel like a monster doing it. She was on the brink of telling Maxson just where to shove his promotion, when her mind somersaulted on the underlying offer.

Was this a kindness disguised as handing out the spoils of war? He was giving her Danse's possessions, rather than burning everything on the principle of it belonging to a traitor, or siphoning it all off to the crew as a free-for-all garage sale. He had to know she would bring Danse's possessions back to him, and he was allowing it.

With a reconsidering frown, Ilya mirrored his salute. "Thank you, Elder."

"You're welcome, Paladin."

She held the display a moment longer after Maxson released his, running over the implications of his words in her head.

 _Paladin Harper._

Was she officially bribed if she thought that sounded fucking badass?

Maxson looked a little surprised to see her gradual smirk, like he hadn't expected it to be that easy to buy off her antagonism. "Just be aware that a Brotherhood Paladin is expected to be a symbol of integrity to our brothers and sisters. I trust you won't disappoint them... or disappoint me." Now that was a plain, standard-issue threat. In hindsight, he wasn't stupid enough to really believe a promotion and giving back Danse's things would stop her from making his life a living hell. Threats were more his style.

Maybe he really did just want her aboard the Brotherhood of Love boat to unite for the cause.

After Ilya dropped her stance, Maxson gave a tight nod to end the formal exchange. "Now, I'm sure you're eager for a report on your forces down on the ground. Paladin Bael did an outstanding job of breaking them in and instructing them on what it means to fight alongside the Brotherhood. He's compiled extensive reports and dossiers on each individual's aptitude scores and capabilities, along with his recommendations for assigning specialised roles, such as sniper detail, medical and technical support, and reconnaissance units. You'll find all the paperwork in your quarters. Now that Bael is familiar with how your militia operates, he will stay behind with my skeleton force to oversee the Commonwealth's security. Star Paladin Groves will assume his role of seeing to it that your auxiliary force is well integrated."

 _Well, fuck me drunk in a spinning turbine._ Ilya wished Danse could have filled that role still, but tossed away the mourning wish.

"I also took the liberty of assigning you a personal yeoman to aid with the logistics and delegation that comes with the burden of leadership, as I'm aware this is all still new to you. You'll find Scribe Haylen at your disposal."

Haylen. Ilya wanted to smile now, but checked the reaction. Maxson obviously trusted the scribe, and had no suspicions that she had played a hand in Danse's escape.

Maxson jawed on in his cold offloading of authority. "I'm sure you're familiar with her broad range of skill sets, on and off the field, and I felt you would be comfortable working with her. She'll serve as a liaison between our forces."

 _So that we won't have to talk face-to-face,_ Ilya figured. Still, it sounded suspiciously like he had done this in her best interest... he really was trying to soften her up.

Wanting to say something along the lines of 'playing nice won't make me forget what you did to Danse,' the exiled paladin's words assailed her mind. _He's only threatened by the idea of giving you more power because you antagonise him. Show him that you're on his side, propose the idea in a civil manner, and you'll have a better chance of winning his approval._ Ilya knew there was no way in steel hell that Maxson would give her that vertibird clearance if she kept up the bitch attitude. _The enemy of my enemy is my friend._

With a black hole eating up her ego, she responded like a true paladin. "That was very considerate of you. Thank you, Maxson." Should she call him Elder when they were talking alliance business?

"Again, you're welcome... Harper." It was tensile and proper, like waxed wood. But now the air tasted awkward, too civil...

A clumsy moment hovered between them as both tried to decide where to go next.

Maxson hurried to dig himself out of the trenches. "...Would you care to inspect them?"

"Yeah, okay. Let's do that."

He extended an arm to gesture for her to fall in at his side, head slightly inclined as if he were ushering her a courtesy. Dubious of his near-gentlemanly treatment, Ilya just played along, and they made their way out to the flight deck to catch a ride down to the airport.

"Elder Maxson." Lancer-Knight Duval was the standby pilot, and his pedo-moustache waved at Ilya as it rode a gregarious smile. "Knight Harper! Great to have you back with us! Just in time for the moving and shaking to start! Can't wait to see our forces kick in some raider teeth together!"

By _moving and shaking_ , Ilya figured he meant all-out nuke-trigger-happy monkey-shit-fight war. She barely had time to grin at him before Maxson corrected him.

"Harper has just been granted the rank of Paladin, Duval. You may care to give her the respect she's due." That was a subtlety for 'shape up, minion.'

Duval's moustache fell flaccid. "Of course, sorry, Elder. My apologies, Paladin. I didn't mean any disrespect. Congratulations on your promotion, it was well deserved."

Ilya wanted to swat Maxson on the back of the head for being such a cruel hardass, but instead remedied Duval's sweats with a healthy smile. "At ease, Duval. And thanks. It's an honour." _My ass._

Duval wasn't put at ease, not with Maxson glooming behind him in the cockpit chair, but he pulled off a seated salute. "The honour's all ours, Paladin. You're a real trailblazer and an asset to our cause."

"Meh. I'm just here for the free food."

Maxson shot her a killer glare, and she got away with giving him a shit-eating smirk. Thank fuck for the blurry lines the alliance gave their chain of command, or she would have been beheaded on the spot in medieval fashion.

The Minutemen initiates were out on display on the airport tarmac, going through the paces of their training under Paladin Bael's watchful eye, and Liberty Prime's godlike gaze from above. Maxson and Ilya perused their activity with wandering steps, and Ilya thought they probably looked a pair of evil overlords divining who would go to slaughter first. In a way, they were.

"As you can see, you have a company of disciplined, adequately trained soldiers of two hundred and thirty six," Maxson explained in his officious manner, hands wrapped behind his back, coat collar struck up to ward off the cold snap of the downdraft over the barricades.

Ilya nodded in silence, noticing a few dark glares from some of the Minutemen. As far as they knew, she had assassinated Danse, their former drill instructor and long-time ally. Then she had abandoned them to the Brotherhood's care for over a week. She was either going to have to come clean with the truth and pray they didn't let it slip, or endure their hatred and try to win their trust all over again. Neither options seemed possible.

Maxson was oblivious to her turmoil. "Taking command of a company this size gives you the responsibility equivalent to a U.S Army Captain, for reference." He locked her in a weighty glance as they strode on. "I hope you're prepared for that responsibility, and the consequences that will inevitably come with it."

Again, Ilya gave a silent nod, exchanging a firm, meaningful look with the elder. Internally, she felt her heart shrink and quiver with an overwhelming dread. Was she prepared for that? No. Not without Danse. Not without his guidance and support, his warm cradle to cry into in the cold nights of horror to her conscience.

"We've trained them to the best of our abilities in the few weeks we've had with them, but of course, a mere few weeks is insignificant compared with the Brotherhood's elite battalions," the elder disclosed plainly.

 _Stroke your own dick, why don't you._

"Your Minutemen will primarily be kept as reserves and provide security forces, but may be called to serve as support task forces for strategic operations." He managed that tongue-twister expertly, with his impeccable diction.

 _Hah. Dick-tion..._

 _Damn Deacon and his cheap humour rubbing off on her._

Ilya refocused by replaying Maxson's words in her head. "Called?" she picked them apart. "I thought _I_ was in command of them?"

Her wary edge wasn't lost on him. He halted their walk and fixed her in place with gimlet eyes. "Let me be clear, here. This campaign is a Brotherhood of Steel initiative. Your Minutemen are in place simply as a token force of diplomatic collusion. The benefits are mutual for both parties; you can witness our operations for your own security of reputation and standards, I can have the security of knowing I have an ally maintaining the Commonwealth in our stead, and a grateful civilian population." Hell, at least he was transparent.

"I get the politics of our deal," Ilya snapped, a hand on her hip in distaste of him calling her Minutemen a token force. "Neither of us can wage two wars alone. What I don't get is how you think you have the right to take my men out from under me and use them for your own needs. You want them as a security force to watch our HQ, okay, that's fair, I agree. But if it comes to needing them out in the field, then it's my call where they go. I'll listen to your advice, you have years of martial education and experience with this shit, and you busted a nut training them, but I'm making the final decisions because they're _my_ men and women, and if they're going to risk their lives, then I need to carry the weight of that."

That glint appeared in his eyes again, the same one she witnessed out on the Prydwen's flight deck the night after his speech at the Castle, when she had confessed she believed in what the Brotherhood stood for and declared she was with them. Now the glint sparked after her defiance of him? Was it simple respect for a worthy ally or adversary, or something more?

The elder spoke after a stretch of intense deliberation. "Very well." He continued his patrol around the tarmac with an easy gait, leaving Ilya to stand dumbfounded.

* * *

Delaying the flight to the neighbouring Castle over a bad case of mole-rat on a stick didn't fly with Maxson for long. After Ilya had spent over an hour huddled over some brambles behind the airport grounds, feigning nausea with crippling agony, he had grumbled "For god's sake, soldier," and gotten Cade down from the Prydwen to give her a shot of antibiotics. And like nearly all pre-war medicine, it should kick in almost instantly. But at least she had spared Danse and the crew an hour.

The sun was ebbing, talons of dusk clouds reaching out over the sea. The flight was far less eventful than their last visit to the Castle together. Maxson was apparently feeling balmy about following her through the crumbled structure as she chased up situation-reports on her Minutemen across the vast leagues of the Commonwealth, even as she made sure to dawdle and inspect every defence in sight. Several times she glanced back to check he was still in tow, only to see him patiently observing his surroundings with wide, curious eyes, both the Minutemen and the castle foundations. Just as long as he wasn't patiently observing her ass with wide, curious eyes, she supposed.

She still remembered what Ronnie had said to her after they had all spent the night brainstorming deployments across the Commonwealth after founding the alliance.

 _"_ _You just watch your ass with that Maxson fellow, General. I was keepin' a close eye on him today, and caught him eyein' you up a few times with that dark stare of his. Like you were a piece of meat."_

Ilya looked over at Ronnie now, the rugged woman tossing the butt of her cigarette as she pulled up a chart of stats that listed their state of security in various regions. She hadn't brought up the news of Danse, but she had to know of it. Nothing escaped Ronnie. But who knew, Ronnie might be prejudiced against synths like many other wastelanders, and considered Danse's execution a service. It hurt Ilya to think that the Commonwealth could turn on Danse just like the Brotherhood had.

The Railroad was fighting against an inbred tidal wave of fear and hatred. But at least they wouldn't have to worry about the Brotherhood stomping on them any time soon, with the Dark Bloods taking their focus off the Institute. They could prepare for defence while the Brotherhood was distracted. But that also meant, so could the Institute... Shaun...

Ronnie was grim in focus, whisking up Ilya's attention. "We got most routes and civilian zones covered. There're some spots here and there that need some extra feet and hands, but nothin' we can't handle, General. We're even givin' the Gunners pause for thought with our new Brotherhood tech." She stopped to send Maxson a respectful nod. "Thanks again, Elder Maxson. Dunno how this one managed to twist your arm, but we're all appreciative that it twisted."

He flicked a surprisingly impish look Ilya's way before answering. "Her husband was a lawyer, if that enlightens you on her arm-twisting capabilities."

Ronnie choked on a laugh, and Ilya went rigid, at a loss for how to take his sudden banter. There was even a budding smile beneath the canopy of his beard. Maxson didn't smile lightly.

Ronnie managed to snort out her laughter, finding Ilya's speechless face amusing. "That does actually explain a lot," she muttered. "Glad to hear you're as good with your mouth as you are with your hands."

Silence.

Ronnie realised too late what she had unwittingly implied, with Ilya's stained cheeks and Maxson's questioning gaze. "Uh, that is, I mean with your words and your marksmen skills. Unlike myself with my words, it seems...ah, holy hell." She sent Maxson an embarrassed grin. "Honestly. That was a mighty slip of the tongue."

 _God damn it._ Ilya cleared her throat loudly to stop the ungracious woman from digging herself an even deeper hole. "Let's move on! There anything else you want to go over before we leave?"

Ronnie seemed overjoyed for the out. "Nope, that's about everything, General. So don't you worry yourself over us, I'll make sure we keep the place nice and tidy for you when you get back."

"You're a lifesaver, Ronnie," Ilya said with warm gratitude, wishing the woman could be in two places at once and help take some of the load off in the Bloodlands. "The Minutemen wouldn't be where they were today if not for the heart and soul you've poured into our movement."

"Hey, you're the one goin' out into hell for us, girly," Ronnie deflected the gratitude back, growing a crooked smile. "I'm just holdin' down the fort and makin' sure these halfwits don't bring down the rest of the Castle walls on top of us all."

"Or the Institute," Ilya pointed out, on a more serious note.

Maxson nodded in grim accord. "Yes. If you detect any increase in synth activity, particularly around your strongholds, do not delay in alerting the command post at the airport. If the threat is significant, they'll forward a distress call to us, and we'll send back support at once. We can't afford to allow the Institute any kind of grip on the Commonwealth."

While Maxson and Ronnie talked the talk, Ilya couldn't help but wonder what Shaun was thinking right now, of the alliance between her Minutemen and the Brotherhood, and the resulting war effort. Would her abandonment and defection be enough of an incentive for him to attack the Castle? The realisation that she didn't know her own son well enough to judge him bruised her soul. But the thought of going back in there to face him, even just to explain herself and try to make him see reason, terrified her. She was a bad mother. What would Nate think of her for abandoning his son, the son she had promised to get back?

 _Nate... but can I bring him back to life? Should I?_

The sharp presence of Maxson's eyes on her gripped her. "Are you ready to leave?" He asked, politely. A small frown of consideration wrinkled up his brow when he realised how lost in thought she had been. "Harper?"

She frowned back into focus, brushing off his uncharacteristic concern. "Yeah. I'm ready."

"You don't wanna give some final words to the men, here?" Ronnie checked with a little disbelief.

"I don't think they'd want to listen to my words, not after... recent events. I see the way some of them look at me. Not even sure why they're still accepting my leadership. Besides, I've never been the speech-type. That's his forte," she tilted her head at Maxson, who stood with a look of denial over him.

"You lead by example, inspiring through your actions. That is the ideal model of leadership and inspiration, and people will fall in behind that regardless of your intent to lead. Words are empty; actions give voice to your words. Remember that."

Ilya felt an unearthly river slip down her spine as she connected gazes with the elder. He had never acknowledged her virtue of leadership before now, let alone complimented it. His advice slowly settled in, and she realised what he was saying was that even if she didn't keep up appearances and play the politically correct leader, people would still follow her as long as she proved that her heart was in the right place.

She was no good in the dance of diplomacy; the dance of battle was her art... but it still felt wrong to leave without a few words.

And it was another way to delay for Danse to get here.

Maxson waited for Ilya to nod at his advice, then she wrung her hands together anxiously, hoping this wouldn't incite a riot to have her struck from leadership. "I think I'll say a few things to them before leaving."

Maxson nodded wordlessly.

* * *

A swell of faces stared up at Ilya as she stood on the Castle wall, the wind nipping through the material of her jumpsuit. Some of these faces were hard and seasoned, but some still supple with doe-eyed youth. Some of these youths couldn't be older than sixteen, and for a moment, she was brushed by shame that her militia had allowed such youth not only to pick up a rifle and risk their lives, but to pick up the burden of taking life.

But the reality of the wastes was a hard pill to swallow coming from a life where danger was kept at bay by chartered borders and trained armadas. Out here, if one didn't know how to defend oneself, death was a door away.

Ilya sipped in a heavy dose of courage to bear the weight of words, straightening her throat to amplify her voice. "Speeches aren't my thing, I prefer shooting people, so I'll be quick." There was a mild crescendo of amusement through the mass below, but many were shaded by disgust—the synth supporters who disapproved of her 'execution' of Danse. Maybe her choice of words should have been more thought out... This was why she didn't make speeches.

Swallowing, Ilya pushed on, letting her words flow by whim. "When I first stumbled out of that vault and agreed to help the Minutemen get back on their feet, I'll admit I didn't really take the whole general thing that seriously. I didn't like being called a general, and I still don't. I didn't want the responsibility, I just wanted to find my son and take out my grief for my husband on anything that got in my way." People were nodding and mumbling, remembering her detached attitude back then, more keen to go in guns blazing than find a peaceful solution to help settlers. Maybe that was why she fit in more with the Brotherhood. "I was a lone wanderer. No one. Just another lost soul with her anger at the world. I couldn't understand what Preston Garvey saw in me, really. I mean, yeah, I was a soldier in my time, and so I felt it my duty to help others wherever I could, but I was still just out for myself back then." She paused to consider her next words carefully, uneasy with all the eyes on her, scoping out the city boundary behind the Castle for any sign of Danse and the crew.

"Then, I found the Brotherhood,"— _I found Danse—_ "and they"— _he—_ "took me in as one of their own, reminded me what it was to be a soldier and fight for a higher purpose than myself. But the Minutemen cause kept calling me, even through the progressive cause of the Brotherhood that I connected with." She noticed Maxson's chin lift an inch, but couldn't make out his judgement. "I found myself torn between being a soldier for humanity's future, and being a leader for the people of today... and I won't lie, I'm still torn."

People shuffled uncertainly, frowns dragging on faces. Ilya sipped up more air. "I can't promise you that I'll be the best leader you've had, but what I can promise you is that I'll do my damndest to be the best leader a simple soldier can be, because now I think I know what Preston saw in me. He saw, through my eyes, what a soldier sees when she looks at the people of today, not what a political leader sees. She sees the future in the daily struggles of you people, just surviving for freedom. She understands that not everyone needs that higher purpose to feel important. She gets that you don't have to reach for a place in the grand scheme of things in order to make your mark for the future. You just need to survive, and live in freedom. Because without freedom, where's the purpose? Where's the purpose in fighting for our future, if we can't just live in freedom and enjoy our lives, build a home, start a family, settle down? While the Brotherhood gives me purpose, the Minutemen give me hope... I think we can both learn a lot from each other. That's why the Minutemen are my people before the Brotherhood, even if I'm a soldier before a leader. And I promise that I'll be fighting out there for your lands and your freedom before anything else."

She stood remotely in the gentle wind, drinking in the echo of her voice as silence drifted on. Had she been too honest, too ballsy? Her eyes scanned outbound for Danse. Still no sign.

Then a single cheer shattered the silence, letting loose a wave of clapping and rowdy cheering, even a few whistles. Ilya couldn't contain a blooming smile of pride in these people, _her_ people. That pride bloomed right into her heart and gave it the beat of vigour she hoped she had instilled in these people.

On her way down the steps, Maxson's gaze caught her eye. He stood amongst the rabble of farmhands, a poised figure of dark austerity whose eyes clung to her, but with a glint.

* * *

Nightfall was sweeping over the wastes, stars shattering the blanket of darkness reigning aloft. Ilya's speech had sparked a gathering of drinks, food, and communal warmth, delaying the Brotherhood's departure even further as its elder was forced to linger, if only to coax the general back to his den of wolves.

"Relax, share a drink with us," Ilya had coaxed back, offering up a bottle of Gwinnett brew. Maxson took one look at the beer and walked off to skulk against the nearest wall. She recognised the scene playing out was the very embodiment of her speech, with the Minutemen just living in freedom, enjoying a few beers, and Maxson representing the whole of the Brotherhood, restless for purpose, unable to relax. It was slightly amusing to see the contrast play out in such perfect re-enactment.

Ilya leaned into the campfire and lost the focus of her gaze to the dancing tongues of flame, twirling her beer through the grass. _Where are you, Danse?_

It wasn't long before Maxson tried again, and this time, he wasn't messing around. His boot took up residence at her side as he stood over her. "I've been lenient, given you your time, but now it wastes. We leave now."

Ilya's heart drummed a beat in her throat and she scrambled for some excuse. None came to mind, expect her one final card. She had been waiting for the right time all day, but it was now or never. His mellowed mood could be the key here.

She pushed up on her feet and saw the relief instantly fall over him. She just hoped his mood would keep. As he turned to lead the way out, she braced and spoke. "Maxson?" He halted, expression monochromatic. Lenient. "Before we leave, there's something I need to ask you... I've been putting it off all day because I figured there was no point. But you've shown me another side to yourself today, and it made me reconsider."

Curiosity touched his monochrome expression. "I'm listening."

"Minutemen scouts came across an abandoned vertibird commandeered by raiders. They fixed it up, and want to put it into service for field use." She didn't like the way his expression was gradually dissolving. "We have a capable pilot travelling in from the north, standing by for the go-ahead to fly in behind us when he can... we just need your clearance for airspace..."

Maxson stood pondering her, devoid of any clues to his thought process. Then, like a snap, his eyes were embossed by disapproval. "No." He strode on.

"No?" Ilya gave chase, temper sparking like a fuse.

"No."

"I'd like an explanation."

He continued past the Castle's collapsed wall, out into the breach of night. "I allowed your people the use of our weapons technology, is that not enough? Now you want a vertibird? Putting aside the fact that your people stole Brotherhood property instead of turning it back over to us as a show of amicable trust, and that it requires a highly skilled pilot to operate in hot zones, but an ungoverned vertibird will compromise the safety of Brotherhood air traffic!"

Ilya ground her teeth as she stomped in his tow. She had been waiting for that excuse from him, nearly word for word. "That can be solved by simple communication. And I told you my pilot is capable. But this isn't about safety, is it? It's about power and your ego!"

"Don't be absurd!"

"You can't have me with a capable force in my power because I could challenge your authority and get in your way. Are you afraid I could take the Brotherhood from you?"

"Don't flatter yourself by suggesting you cause an insecurity in me." Derision oozed from his voice with ease, even as his rapid step chafed his breath.

Ilya quickstepped nearer to his shoulder, pushing as much scorn into her voice as she could. "But I have, haven't I." It was a statement. "Stopping you from murdering Danse forced you to really look at yourself in the mirror and realise what you nearly became."

She had moved too close. Maxson pivoted on her and grasped her by the arms, locking them to her sides and jarring her to a halt. Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt her boots loose solid purchase of the ground. She was still connected to the ground, but knowing that he had her lifted hit home with just how strong he was. Fear settled over her.

"I told you, that our previous conversation, would be the last time we ever spoke of him," he warned in clipped, whispered snarls.

Ilya lifted her chin to his boiling maw, enduring his hold of her with unflinching eyes. "Let. Me. Go."

He seared his glare into her a moment longer, eyes so near she could see the arcs of blue in his irises, then he plopped her back to the ground and made for the awaiting vertibird. "Get in."

"I need to wait for someone..."

"Time wastes. We're leaving. Now!" He claimed the pilot seat and furiously stabbed at nodes. The vertibird gulped on its fusion core and roared awake like a stretching beast.

Ilya fought for composure. She had blown it. Pushed too hard. Played her cards wrong.

One last look at the city ruins, then her feet were carrying her into the vertibird, and with the man that would imprison her in war.

 _I'm sorry, Danse._


	59. Nightfall

**Nightfall**

* * *

By the flick of his hand, Danse's platoon moved up in tandem, hemming the motley band of raiders into a dead-end of building debris. There was nowhere to run now.

"Light 'em up!"

An array of firepower converged by his command, ripping into their bodies with merciless violence, creating a space of gore and metal for some lone scavenger to wonder upon long after the crew had moved on.

Danse nodded in grim satisfaction, and his crew emerged from the cover of night to inspect their work, weapons steaming by the barrels. The raiders never stood a chance.

"Take what we need and move out." Danse turned away from the scene while the others looted, peering into the crowding dark of the city ruins. They were behind schedule. Progress had been hindered by endless encounters of city crawlers, from raiders to Gunners to mutants. Moving a platoon unseen through the hazards of the city was a difficult task, even in the darkness. And several members of the group were not so versed in the art of stealth. Like that damned super mutant...

If only he still had his power armour, he could patrol the Wastes behind the smokescreen of steel, ghost the roads, vanquish all in his way. But his armour was lost, just like his life. How was he to follow Ilya to war without his armour—his identity? How was he to follow her under some mute, faceless pretence? Someone along the way would eventually request his identity.

It didn't matter. As long as he was at her side. He could make up the rest as he went.

But spontaneity wasn't his strong suit...

Something stirred the air. Danse peered ahead, his eye a keen surveyor. But it wasn't his eye that detected movement. It was his ears.

A thick droning reverberated through the night winds, wrapping itself around the skyscrapers and into his eardrums. Danse frowned, pushing his hood back to clear his ears for a better chance at identifying the sound.

"No..."

Panic took up a siege in his mind, purging all traces of his sanity as he stepped forward into the clearing of the street. "No, no, no, no, no..."

"Crew-cut?" Hancock grated from behind, but it was muted for the growing rumble in the air that spelled failure to Danse.

With rifle in arm, he sprinted down the street to get a clear view of the sky from around the skyscrapers, ignoring the hushed calls from the others. The deep rumbling was interspersed with the rotors of vertibirds.

"No, no, no, no..."

The Brotherhood of Steel's fleet took to the stars as they burst out from behind the city ruins, unrolling in squadrons that shook the fibres of the night. Danse didn't have the sense to stop short in his sprint and hide from sight. He didn't care about his discovery. He stared up at the fleet of steel angels in a combination of awe and horror.

Then he saw it. The Prydwen. Rolling with the dark, growling through the night, stretching out its mighty mass for war. It arced for the Glowing Sea and the red hell beyond, vertibirds flanking its pilgrimage. The city quaked under its wrath, the very air seeming to shift apart in its passage.

"Ilya..."

He felt the presence of the others as they raced up behind him, Nick and Hancock on his shoulders, but he was barely aware. All he could think of was her, alone in that godforsaken land, balancing her burdens without a sole for support, drowning in blood and fire, surrounded by ash and bone.

He had failed her. Just like Cutler. Just like his squad.

Desperation climbed up his chest. "Preston, hail her frequency, now!"

Preston nodded in a fluster and thumbed his radio piece. "Ilya, it's Preston, come in." He waited for a response. "We see the Prydwen leaving. Are you onboard? What's going on? Give us your status. Over."

Still nothing. Danse wanted to wrench the radio from Preston and rant into it for Ilya to respond, but knew better than to risk himself again. Why wasn't she responding? They should be in range. What if stalling Maxson had turned sour and she had been forcibly subdued. What if she had been...

No. He couldn't think like that.

But to spite him, old demons awoke from his nightmares and flashed through his head, clawing in like talons. Visions of Cutler, unable to reach him, a friend betrayed to time. The plea. The bullet. The regret. His chest strained with a crisp shot of adrenaline, and his breathing spiked. Then came the dreaded headache from resisting his demons.

The more the Prydwen drew away into the gloom, the more his own gloom was dragged off with it, replaced by a molten core of fury that gathered in his fists.

"Maxson," he growled out through the fury. "You son of a bitch."

He wasn't going to take her from him. Slamming his rifle home in its holster, Danse turned and strode back down the street, intent on continuing to the Castle. "Preston, contact the outpost at Sanctuary. Once the pilot arrives, have him fly immediately to the Castle," he snapped out.

"You want to fly after her even without Maxson's clearance?" Preston asked closely in tow, a little incredulously. "It's pretty obvious he denied it if she couldn't stall him. I thought you said that would be suicide? That they'd just shoot us down as an unidentified bogey."

"I did say that. And I don't care."

Silence followed him.

"Well, is someone gonna talk some sense into the guy?" MacCready pushed after the silence fell flat.

"Danse," Nick chipped in, and Danse heard the crew falling in behind him, their footsteps a mismatched parade, "just take a breather and think about this."

"What's to think about?" Danse snapped as he rounded on the synth, whose mechanised face was slated into compassion. It wasn't enough to disrupt Danse's episode. His adrenal glands were exploding. "Like hell I'm gonna let her go to war without me. I promised her that I'd always have her back. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna let Maxson stop me from keeping that promise."

Nick nodded composedly. "I get that you and Ilya are close, and that she's obviously very important to you—heck, it's no wonder, after the things you two have gone through together—But there has to be another way to get to her without throwing your life away."

 _She's more than just important to me,_ Danse parried internally. But revealing their freshly kindled relationship to the entire crew would be irresponsible. They barely had a grasp of it themselves, with all their complications still to unravel and demons still to battle. The last thing they needed was nosy, meddling observers.

"If you have any other ideas, Nick, then feel free to share," Danse patronised hotly, turning sharply to continue on, working his way along a fence that sectioned off a building's carpark. "Because walking is off the table."

"Well there must be a way to disable or cloak the vertibird's IFF signature so the Brotherhood won't detect us on the radars."

"That was the first thing I did when we escaped the Prydwen after the heist. But disabling the IFF doesn't cover the heat or electronic emissions on radar. There's no way to escape detection, at least none that I'm aware of. I don't know the full extent of the technology in your time, but today, that type of sorcery is pure science-fiction."

Nick had no counter for that. But MacCready did.

"This is nuts," he exclaimed with a frantic laugh. "You're nuts, Danse. Just 'cause you found out you're really a synth, doesn't make you invincible, you know?"

By the tone, Danse got the impression that the reckless mercenary wasn't fond of synths. No doubt he had been hired to kill his fair share of suspected synths over the course of his career; if mercenary work could even be considered a career. While Danse understood the prejudiced tone, he had no respect for a merc. They lacked the moral fibre of a soldier.

"Being a synth has nothing to do with my decision. I highly suggest you keep any other similar thoughts to yourself throughout the foreseeable future, MacCready."

Another laugh from the mercenary, but this one sounded defensive, disbelieving. "Jesus. I'm just trying to talk some sense into you. No need for the threats, man." Danse had hardly considered that a threat.

"Put a cork in it, Mac," Hancock scolded before Danse got the chance. He noted how odd it was for the Ghoul to come to his defence. "Look, we all wanna keep our girl safe. She's the glue that holds this rag-tag excuse of a family together, and we _are_ a family, and family sticks together. I didn't run out on my town to take a vacation out in hell for some band of misfits that meant nothin' to me. So how's about we stop picking each other's bones for once and put our heads together with an actual plan?"

Danse found his heart smoothing out its rabid beat, giving him an opportunity to peer back while keeping mobile. He found Hancock's gleaming black eyes in the dark. "The Brotherhood is my family," he said sternly, leaving no room for interpretation. "...But I appreciate what you just said..."

"Good, 'cause it ain't like that took a chunk out of my ego or anything," the Ghoul quipped back in sarcasm.

With a sigh, Danse halted his pathfinding at the edge of an alleyway, crimping down into a squat as the others fell in around him. Tension was in a backflow and he took stock for a moment. "Maxson is a powerful man, and he's dangerous to anyone who could threaten the Brotherhood," he explained in hoarse whispers. "He didn't rise to Elder on his political prowess alone. Despite his youth, he's a veteran soldier and a cunning strategist, and not just on the battlefield. The power struggle between him and Ilya is merely a game to him, a mild challenge at best. And the tension between them is at an all-time high. He's taken her out there, and I intend to do whatever it takes to get to her and keep her safe."

He surveyed the decrepit street ahead, then proceeded in a low sprint, waving the others up behind him. Nick took up position on his flank, revolver primed to keep him covered. "So you're not just worried about the Dark Bloods making a hit on her," he deduced with sudden realisation. "You really think Maxson would hurt her, even have her killed?"

With the glance he gave the synth, Danse tried not to balk away from his nearness or acknowledge the revulsion crawling over his skin. Old habits died hard, and his newfound companionship with the synth detective was still fresh, jarring to his bias. Putting aside his conflicted opinion, he spoke morosely. "I... I don't know," he admitted. "When Maxson confronted us outside the bunker, I had never seen such anger in him before. Even as a boy, he had always been guarded with his emotions, taught the importance of self-control that would one day be expected of him."

Memories swept him back in time, watching from afar in the Citadel as the young Arthur was trained in the ways of martial discipline, singled out by his instructors, pushed harder than the rest, forced to be the example for his peers, and severely punished when he faltered—often physically. It was harsh, cruel, designed to whittle out the weak and torment the strong to be stronger, but it was the way of steel. And the young elder came out the other side a perfect specimen of steel. The Zenith of Steel... but broken?

Ilya's words came to him from the dark.

 _He's dedicated his whole life to the Brotherhood and his future vision for mankind, surrendered his entire childhood to it, and he's a dead man walking because of that._

Danse lamented at the memory of her words. She had been concerned that he would end up like Maxson, but truthfully, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Maxson had ended up like him? Danse had watched from afar as Arthur grew, a protective instinct slowly forming in his heart as if the boy were his young brother, but had done nothing to shield him from the darkness of his fate.

The pair of luminescent eyes pinning him in waiting brought Danse back to the present, and the reality of the man Arthur had become. "When Maxson wielded the wrath he became known for, it was always with cold control, orchestrated for effect, to inspire or intimidate. Never out of rage. He's a master of himself. Yet the hate I saw in his eyes outside the bunker..." his voice trailed off, irresolute. He shook his head. "Even so, the thought of him becoming..."

"A lady-basher?" That was Deacon, somewhere in the huddle around Danse. Despite the drollery of the suggestion, Danse caught the worried note. He was aware that Deacon and Ilya were particularly close. The spy had taken great strides to find her in the fallout of his exile.

"Dishonourable," he refined the spy's choice of words. "He's an honourable man, but the Brotherhood favours violence, and displays of power over diplomacy to exert control. It's a conservative tradition that serves us like the laws of nature serve the earth. The struggle of survival weeds out the weak, so the strong may dominate and grow, strengthening the species as a whole."

"Real charming," Piper commented. "Meanwhile, the weak and helpless are left to rot. A.k.a, us."

Danse just gave a dismissive shrug. "Maxson believes in the old ways. He's firm to uphold them, but he also knows when to be lenient, like any good leader should... But after his reaction to my identity, I feel I... I don't really know who he is anymore. Or perhaps I never did."

"I don't think anyone knows the real Mad Max." That was Deacon again. "Maybe not even himself. But didn't you support his decision to exile you? Even kill you?" Obviously Ilya had filled him in on certain details.

"I still do," Danse confirmed with full resolve, voice steady, taming all traces of personal emotions with professional values. Just as he was taught. "I needed to be the example, not the exception. But it was Ilya who made me realise that the method he took to see to it was... cold. Inhumane. Even if I'm not human. He had me hunted down for execution without the chance for fair trial, as if my loyalty had earned me nothing, not even an honourable death, and he used Ilya to do it." He felt fresh anger mounting up his gut, searing pathways through his veins, and unlike himself, he let it brew. "The final, most heinous insult he could have given me. To test her, and mock me."

His anger was left to brew in the air before Hancock murmured, with a dose of satisfaction, "Too bad she failed his test then, huh."

Or did she, Danse wondered silently? Part of him knew it was wishful thinking, but he still cherished the possibility that Maxson's true motive in sending her was in the hopes she would find a way to spare Danse, and save the elder from himself. And she had.

"So, hypothetically," Deacon started off, leaning back against his cover of urban rubble, "say they're having a bit of a row over who gets to sit in the big chair and play king, or queen, and big ol' bully King Arthur is tempted to smack Ili around a little, because he just really, _really_ wants to sit in that freakin' chair, with its plush designer cushions, and that unfolding footrest fit for an elder..." The hypothetical scene was set up in such full colour, it was a little too vivid for Danse's comfort, especially the offhand reference to pre-war Arthurian myth. He scowled as Deacon went on.

"Can't you just imagine them scrapping over that like an old married couple?" he snickered off-topic, before clearing his throat under Danse's glare. "Anyway. Let's just be real here. It wouldn't really be lady-bashing. I mean, Ilya's not exactly defenceless. She might not have the muscle mass she would have had back in her day, but she's a vet, too. If you've ever seen her go hand-to-hand, you'd know she can scrap like a little hellion."

"I can vouch for that," Hancock supported with a grin.

"Yes!" Strong joined, a little too loudly. "Small human weak but fast. Good fighter!"

Danse swallowed his disgust for the mutant like bile. "So is Maxson." The mutant just growled at that, like a protective guard dog. Danse swept his gaze across the huddle with dark intent. "Among the Brotherhood, he's a living legend. Cults have even been uplifted in his honour, revering his very existence, though he disapproves of them and has personally shut several of the more fanatic ones down... Did you know he took a deathclaw out with nothing but a combat knife? And he has the scar to prove it."

There were impressed mumbles, and unimpressed humphs, though Danse knew it was out of ego. She may have been a soldier fit to join the pre-war Rangers or the Marines, depending on if she was army or navy, but Maxson had been a Sentinel of the Brotherhood of Steel, born into his fate, in an even deadlier world. Perhaps now they understood what Ilya was up against.

Clay-Crawler made a humming sound from within his power armour, at the rear of the huddle. He had been surprisingly quiet throughout the night. Perhaps because he had sparked that skirmish between Danse and Hancock earlier. "...But, Whisper _is_ deathclaw."

Quiet chuckles broke out. Danse even had to grin a little. Yes, she was, in her own sense. His little deathclaw. But even a deathclaw needed a rear guard. And a shoulder.

Taking a deep breath, Danse reached for composure, securing it in a stoic hold. These people deserved that much from him. "Look, I understand your concerns, and if the risk of accompanying me is too high. The moment we approach on the Prydwen's radars, there's a high probability we will be targeted as hostile before even being queried. There's no shame in refusing a risk of that nature. But it's a risk I'm willing to take."

His conviction didn't flinch, and neither did theirs. He caught the incline of Nick's fedora in the dark.

"You're one of ours, now," the old synth declared, with a hint of a grin bringing life to the pallid line of his lips. "We're taking that risk with you. So lead the way, son."

Son? Danse considered that odd gesture, before dismissing it as his gaze dragged out past the fellow synth to watch the fading shadow of the Prydwen and its honour fleet of vertibirds. The green effervescence of the Glowing Sea yawned out beyond to swallow them whole. Swallow _her_ whole. So be it.

Nodding in firm finality, and perhaps a little respect for the people gathered around him, Danse committed them to ride into hell behind him.

"Outstanding. Then let's move."

* * *

The Commonwealth was falling away. It felt like her life was falling away.

Ilya stood on the warship's railings, bound for hell, a statuesque of sorrow in the night, letting the calls on her radio burst and ebb. It would be better this way, for both of them. Saying goodbye was too hard.

Maxson's move to deploy the Prydwen had taken her by surprise. She had envisioned them moving in a mass of vertibirds, immune to an anti-air strike wiping them out in one fell swoop. But the elder's thinking was that the likelihood of the Dark Bloods getting their mitts on anything that powerful was low. His decision to move the Prydwen was an intimidation factor. And damned if it wouldn't be intimidating.

The gamble was that it left the Commonwealth vulnerable, giving the Brotherhood's enemies the impression that they were withdrawing their hand. Ilya hoped the Minutemen were up for a revolt, if it came to it.

A welt of mourning grew the further away she was taken, staring out at the broken sprawl of her home, remembering what it had once been. Beautiful, teeming with life, vibrant in its peak of ingenuity. Her life was to be perfect.

A paradise lost.

But despite its ruin, it was still alive. Nature adapted, licked its wounds, and survived on, soldiering through the worst of its children's wrath. How many times had she awoken to a glowing sunrise over the grasslands, flushed with the morning warmth, the air fresh and dewy? How many times had she fallen asleep under the guardian light of the stars, their incandescence so crisp they could hypnotise her into serene slumber? The stars of her past had been shrouded by the light pollution of unending cities. The great starry wild and the simple beauty of the sunrise and set had gone unappreciated for the monuments mankind made to greed and power. Ilya realised that she was ashamed of her time, ashamed for having been a part of that, a gear in the vast clockwork of a corrupted society, no matter how miniscule.

Now, she was a gear in the good fight for freedom and future. Her home was gone, but her new home gave her hope. Even if she kept none for herself.

Would she ever see it again? Would she ever see _him_ again?

Her bones told her it was a hopeless hope.

* * *

 _Ilya was soaring, weightless, breaking the clouds with her haste to reach the war. The world was a hectic pit set for doom, splintering under the strain of mankind's psychosis. Tribes of humanity that called themselves nations were howling for control, teeth clinched on one another's throats, waiting, waiting for that flinch._

 _Time was waning. It would be soon. She had to stop it. She had to reach the war and stop it. Nate and Shaun could still be saved. Her world could still be saved. She could stop it all from ever happening._

 _The sky was growing heavy, burdened by dark clouds laced with green arcs of radioactive static. They dragged on her, dampening her haste, her will. Lightning clapped through the air and burst apart her eardrums, slamming her down from the storm. She fell. She watched it loom over her as she fell, seeing it crawl the sky in search of the war, gorging on mankind's fury to fuel its mass and gait._

 _She couldn't let the storm reach the beginning of the war, where it would spawn the apocalypse. She had to reach it first._

 _Falling, falling._

 _The world was growing up at her as she fell, the metropolitan vista of mankind's greed spreading far beyond her eyesight. It was swathed in dark, lit only by ripe anger as it consumed reason._

 _She couldn't remember how to fly. She couldn't stop her fall. The storm overhead was expanding, breathing out like a hungry beast, following her downward journey. Fly. How did she fly?_

 _"_ _Please, don't leave me behind. Don't go to war."_

 _Nate? Danse? The voice meshed into an indistinct drone. The voice was tainted by memory, pleading, anguished._

 _But she had to go to war._

 _"_ _It will change you, destroy you. Don't go out there. Stay here, with me. With me."_

 _"_ _I want to, Danse, Nate. I love you. But I can't."_

 _She was falling. She had to fly. Had to fly to war, to do her part, to do something. It was in her blood to wander, to protect, to fight, to survive._

 _"_ _It will destroy you."_

 _Nate? Danse? His words were the herald the world was waiting for. Mankind's fury snapped, set loose to raze the world asunder. She fell into the war, feeling herself burst on impact with ground zero. A great light to end it all in fire._

 _She was the war. And it was inside her._

The hand set on her shoulder was seized in her grip and used to pull her assailant against her combat knife, poised at the throat that uttered a gasp. Now that Maxson had the Commonwealth secure in his hold, he didn't need her. But he should have known that slitting her throat in her sleep wouldn't be so easy.

But as the fog of sleep lifted, Ilya focused on her assailant. It wasn't Maxson.

"Fuck. Haylen. Don't do that."

Releasing the scribe, Ilya swathed a clammy hand over her face and sighed. Haylen stood over her bunk, panting quietly to collect herself, eyes flared wide in shock. After a few breaths, she spoke in frayed remorse.

"Sorry. I know. I learned not to wake a dreaming soldier from Danse sticking a gun in my face one time, but you were getting worse. Starting to thrash out. I–I couldn't just stand there."

Ilya would have done the same thing. She _had_ , for Danse. Over and over. The mention of him and his ongoing woes ambushed her with revived guilt for leaving him behind. It would be killing him, watching the Prydwen sail away, taking her out of his reach. It had killed _her_ watching the Commonwealth fall away, knowing he was out there somewhere, watching in kind. Knowing he might never see her again.

She told herself it was for the best. It was too dangerous for him to walk amongst the Brotherhood, _she_ was too dangerous for him to protect. Falling, falling. Her dream haunted her. Falling into insanity.

Her hand slipped to her mouth and pinched her bottom lip. Nate. His unburied body. A stolen glimpse at the two stacked wedding rings on her finger induced a small frown as she focused in on them. The moment she had taken Nate's ring from his corpse, promised him she would avenge him and find their son, and then slipping it over her own ring, it had melded to her finger and never slipped free.

But Kellogg was dead. Shaun was found. And still, the thought of ripping off the rings scalded her heart. It would be like letting Nate go forever.

She thought of his frozen body down in the vault, captured in that eternal rictus. Exposed. Unburied. Dishonoured. He deserved a proper burial. She should have buried him long ago... but the thought of going back down there...

Now it was too late. She was deploying for war, and she might never return to the Commonwealth alive, whether she intended to bury him, or bring him back to life with that specimen voodoo... but it was probably too late for that. Nate might remain down there without his wife ever giving her final goodbye... Moisture collected gradually in her eyes. Ilya balled her hand to clutch the rings, a hopeless clutch at forgiveness.

From both men.

"Harper?" Haylen urged softly, still standing over her. "You okay?"

Blinking away the tears, Ilya swallowed and nodded. She yearned to unload her despairing heart on Haylen, but there were too many eyes and ears around them. With a wince, she leaned up and pushed raven strands of hair from her face. "I'm okay. Bad dreams. Nothing new."

"You wanna talk it out?"

She shook her head.

"I understand. It's common among soldiers."

Too true. Like Danse. Though his demons went beyond the common realms. Ilya wondered if Haylen knew the extent of his PTSD. After all, she had been the one to suggest his diagnosis. If he ever agreed to seek professional help—if she ever saw him again—then Haylen could be a start.

Gazing up at the scribe, Ilya knew the question that was hovering on her lips. _Is he okay?_ With a gentle smile, Ilya nodded.

Haylen caught on instantly and gave a glad sigh. She hovered a moment, hesitant.

"Is there something you needed?" Ilya prompted at length.

Haylen huffed out a timid laugh. "Well, for starters, should I address you as Paladin, or General?"

Ilya parried the laugh. "Complicated, right? Harper works for me. Ilya would be better, but Maxson might get his balls in a twist over decorum."

The scribe suppressed a grin, her mouth drooping at the corners. "I'm going to have to advise you against speaking of our elder in such distaste, Harper."

Turning up a mock scowl at her, Ilya nodded at the forced formality. "Noted." She pushed onto her feet and clicked in the buckles of her jumpsuit that she had loosened before grabbing a nap. "ETA to the Bloodlands?"

"We're still a few hours out. The Prydwen moves at a slow burn compared to the vertibird scouts sent ahead. It's estimated we should arrive at daybreak. Elder Maxson wants our arrival to be witnessed across the whole territory as a clear statement of our intention."

"Of course he does." Ilya rolled a tie off her wrist and pulled back her hair, annoyed by the strands tickling her face. "The Brotherhood doesn't know the meaning of subtle. Reports from the scouts?"

"They're picking the way for us and clearing the DZ. Sounds like they had some trouble with the local wildlife terrorising the air, but they were no match for miniguns. Touchdown went smoothly. Minimal wildlife resistance. Negative raider sightings... decent weather."

Ilya wished she could be out there with them. But at least the weather was nice. "The gods of war must be smiling on us. Maxson must be _full_ of smiles." When Haylen didn't confirm that, Ilya lifted a wry brow. "Not even one?" Haylen just shook her head, tight-lipped. "Damn... On the inside, then."

The scribe stepped aside as Ilya moved to her footlocker and pulled out her boots, stepping into them and tugging them up. She propped a leg up on her bunk to buckle the straps.

"If you don't mind me asking," Haylen said slowly, "why are you still sleeping out in the crew quarters? I was told you were assigned Danse's officer quarters."

Ilya felt something in her chest click out of place, and she faltered a moment, pretending to focus on her boot buckles. "Old habits die hard," she feinted shrugging. "I'm so used to roughing it with the grunts. Having my own space feels weird." Slapping her buckled boot, she lowered her leg to hit the deck, facing Haylen's sceptical eyes. "I still feel like an F.N.G in the Brotherhood sometimes."

"F.N.G?"

"Pre-war term. Surprised it didn't carry over. Stands for Fucking New Gal, in my case."

Prolonging her wear of scepticism, Haylen hovered behind Ilya as she ferreted around in her pack for supplies; mostly just to reassure herself that her pocket canteen of whiskey was still in there if she needed it. She strapped and clipped on her multiple weapon holsters, just as a precaution if she needed to arm up ASAP.

" _Or_ you feel unworthy of taking Danse's place." Haylen quietened her voice while Ilya froze. "Maybe you even feel that making it your home would be like disturbing his ghost."

Nailed to the wall. Sighing, Ilya dropped the pretence, along with her shoulders. She stared into the depths of her pack. "It just feels wrong, Haylen."

"Then don't think of it like you're taking his place. Think of it like you're taking care of what's his. Let his ghost in there be a comfort and not a judgement."

Ilya slanted her head to look at Haylen in her peripheral, whispering over her shoulder. "You talk like he's actually dead."

She saw the scribe shuffle her weight uneasily. "To the Brotherhood, he is."

"But he's not. This place is still his home. And he should be here."

It was a struggle just to keep her voice to a whisper. Her emotions were leaking out from strained fissures, burned off into frustrated steam. She suddenly craved that shot of whiskey to wash it back down.

Fortunately, Haylen empathised. "I know. It's all wrong." She settled a hand on Ilya's shoulder. "But we did everything we could for him, and he's alive because of us. More because of you. I never actually got the chance to thank you for listening to me before you left to find him. I was so terrified that Maxson had turned you against him."

The scribe's whisper held a faint tremble of remembered emotions, and Ilya felt guilt strike through her. She turned back to face her again. "I'm sorry I was so cold. I had to stay in cover or Maxson would have sent someone else to find him. And probably have me killed."

"I know, now anyway," Haylen nodded, firm-faced. "Anyway, we shouldn't be talking like this out in the open. How about we move into your new quarters? I'll even help with the house warming by being your pack mule and giving some redecorating tips." Her smile was bright and witty.

Ilya managed to smile back, but shook her head. "Thanks, but later. I should go make an appearance with the Minutemen and get them filed and ranked." She remembered Danse's advice to assign a personal guard detail, and wondered if it was really necessary, or if he was just being paranoid for her safety.

"All your personnel dossiers are in your quarters," Haylen reminded her.

Ilya swallowed a grumble. She was being petty, but she just didn't want to set foot in there yet. It felt like a violation of Danse's honour. "Would you mind grabbing them and bringing them to the mess? It should be quiet in there while everyone's going through their eve of battle rituals."

 _It should be quiet in your head on the eve of battle, too..._

Ilya shuddered at the invasion of the dark presence, worming its way back into her mind the more stress piled up. But Haylen didn't seem to notice. With a sigh, the scribe acquiesced and headed off down deck.

"You know I wasn't serious about the pack mule thing," she threw back over her shoulder.

Ilya used the pocket of time to prep some coffee for the ordeal, picking a table in the corner of the mess to wait for the scribe. They spent an hour digging deep into the Minutemen personnel reports from Paladin Bael, picking out his recommendations and assigning roles. The company-strong of combatants were sectioned into four small platoons, and lieutenants were assigned to lead each. They would bear the responsibility of choosing their own squad leaders.

The two finished their final glossing over of the ranks on their third coffees, minds buzzing and hands jittering on papers. It would all need to be run by Star Paladin Groves before Ilya could address her men and get them up to speed on their ranking system, but she told Haylen she wanted some time to spend getting to know them before getting the stamp of approval from Groves and then ambushing them with orders straight out of boot camp.

"I think we made a pretty good job of it, don't you?" Haylen leaned back in the stiff mess chair to stretch her limbs.

Ilya did the same, rolling her neck and hearing the crackle of her spine. "As good as it can get without any field experience. I hope Bael's recommendations were solid."

"Bael's well respected in the ranks, and almost as renowned a leader as Danse." Haylen caught herself too late, grimacing as if she were in sudden physical pain. "As he _had_ been," she corrected herself regretfully. They both sat in silence a moment. To erase the slip up, she slid out of her chair and stacked up the files neatly. "I'll be at my station in the maintenance bay if you need anything. I'll keep these safe until you decide to report in to Groves."

"Thanks, Haylen. No way I could have gotten my head around this without you."

As Haylen left with a parting smile, Ilya remained with her lukewarm coffee, letting her mind run empty. Just for a moment. Just to breathe. Feeling an odd chill to the air, she cupped her coffee mug, which offered little warmth, and hunched her shoulders in on the table, losing the focus of her gaze in the swirling taupe liquid. The worm in her head was right. She should be clear-headed and full of resolve on the eve of battle. Instead she was buried in personal conflict. How did Maxson do it? Be a dead man walking?

Buried deep in the trenches of her mind, she didn't notice when a man approached her table. "General."

She pulled herself out of her coffee and blinked at him. He was a solid man with solid eyes, boring into her with open indignation. He carried his Brotherhood-issued Minutemen variation of the jumpsuit uniform—dyed a navy blue with black detailing—with undeniable pride.

"Please, just call me Harper," she said casually, though braced herself for a confrontation.

The man didn't bat an eye. "My name is Fowler. I'm here on behalf of the Minutemen."

She recognised the name at once. He was one of her lieutenants. In fact, the most competent of the four. She sat up straighter to listen.

"Many of the men here have expressed their concerns working under your leadership. There's a lot of talk around your agenda, and your relationship with Maxson."

Ilya canted her brows up at him, incredulous. "Define relationship."

He took a moment just to stare down on her, gauging her incoming reaction. When he spoke, he was dry of emotion, and his voice was dense with judgement. "Rumour has it that the two of you are more than just allies. That your affair had something to do with Danse's execution."

"...The _fuck?_ " Ilya snapped off. She was tempted to hammer his accusatory face into her coffee. "That is nothing but bullshit. Maxson and I can barely be in the same room together, let alone be fucking up a storm together. We have enough of a storm on our hands as it is."

The Minuteman appeared unmoved by her reaction, his weathered face stern in its set. "So you just assassinated Paladin Danse because Maxson ordered you to?"

She held him in the grips of her glare, a cold, lethal eddy running through her bloodstream. This self-righteous prick had no idea who she was, and the lengths she had gone to, to save Danse. "This conversation is over," she gnarled through her teeth.

"It's not over until I'm finished, _General_ ," he declared, emboldened by her resistance. Ilya's fingers clenched her coffee in stirring anger. "Some of us aren't comfortable following you anymore. We think you're too cosy with the Brotherhood."

"You picked a hell of a time to back out," she remarked snidely.

"Our duty is to the Commonwealth, not to you. We're out here to do our part, and if that means operating independently, then we'll do what we have to do."

"Good luck with that." She knew she should be allaying his concerns instead of antagonising him, but his offensive approach blew any of her patience out of the water. She just wasn't in the mood for this shit right now.

Fowler worked his jaw at her in contempt. "Danse was a good man, synth or not. For you to just turn your back on him like that, after everything he did to help when you first got the Minutemen on their feet, it says just how far you're willing to go for the Brotherhood. We gave ourselves up to the Brotherhood's rule because we trusted you, trusted that you wouldn't conform to Maxson's radicalism. But you're just another bloodthirsty merc calling yourself a soldier. Then you just up and went MIA during our training? Did you even know about poor Anton? No. Because you clearly haven't spent the time to check in with us. He spoke out about the Brotherhood's treatment of Danse, then I found him lying behind the airport grounds, beaten to a pulp and trying to crawl back to barracks. He never talked, but it's obvious some Brotherhood muscleheads wanted to shut him up. The whole tarmac nearly turned into an open brawl over it, before your toy-boy Maxson came down from his floating castle and shouted us all back into our doghouses. Some of the younger boys were ready to do some stupid things, and _I_ had to keep them in line to prevent a fucking civil war breaking out. And where were you? Taking some time off after a job well done! Basking in the afterglow of Maxson's loving praise! The least you could do is be straight with us about Danse's execution and explain to us why you did it. He was a great inspiration to many of us, especially the younger men here. They considered it an honour to be trained by him. But now they know that honour meant nothing to you!"

" _Shut up!_ " Ilya shrieked at him, smashing her coffee off the table to shatter on the deck before exploding from her chair to bear down on him with full fury. Her stomach had dropped to hear how bad things had gotten in her absence, but now it was in her throat, pulsing out her rage like hot bile. "Just shut your fucking face! You have no idea what the _fuck_ you're talking about! You know nothing about Danse and what he means to me!"

Fowler's face twitched into a confused frown, but Ilya was still too incensed to take advantage of it. She leaned at him from over the table, snarling her words. "I am _not_ Maxson's bitch, so if you don't shut down those rumours, then I'll shut _you_ down! Got it?! We have bigger things lying ahead! We're going to war! You have no idea of the horrors waiting for you! Have you ever been in a war?! Have you ever been reduced to a single instinct to kill? Do the screams of endless fields of slaughter still ring in your ears to this very day? Do you still remember the last glimpse of thought on every man's face before you blow his fucking brains out? Have you ever gone numb having to kill your way through a field of living, breathing people, day by day, night by night, until you lose all sense of time and meaning!? No! You're gonna fucking die out here!"

The Minuteman stood somewhere between disbelief and bewilderment, holding his ground but lost for a path of attack. He clearly hadn't expected the General of the Minutemen to lose her shit so quickly, and so violently.

Ilya felt her limbs quiver with an overload of adrenaline, and impatience rasped at her skull while the man just stood there, silent, unmoving. "Now fuck off!" she barked shrilly, pairing it with a violent gesture for him to clear out. He fell away in taut shock.

The pure silence of the room spoke to Ilya as she stood immobile, judging her, murmuring of her insanity.

Breathe.

She couldn't. The judgement of the silence chased her from the room, down the hall, the rungs to the lower deck, out into the open air of the foredeck. Out into the Glowing Sea.

The bite of the midnight air stole her breath for a moment before she slammed the hatch behind her. Radioactive emissions of green haunted the skies as the Prydwen rolled through, the everlasting storm wrapping its journey in murky desolation. Static energy erupted in claps of lightning, each burst evoking Ilya's radiation meter to life. But she didn't care about the radiation. Let it eat away at her.

She screamed. Screamed until her lungs were scraped raw. Screamed until the Wasteland screamed back. The radiation both fed and consumed her fury until the dark presence possessing her felt exiled. But she knew it was still inside her. It always was.

In the aftermath, she found a lonely spot on the deck, folded into it, and crumbled into tears.

* * *

She was summoned. Elder Maxson was awaiting her on the bridge. The hours had waned, and now their arrival into the Bloodlands was nearing, its welcome like a predator's hungry grin. Ilya took up her place at Maxson's side. They exchanged dark gazes before sharing the view over the terraformed landscape beyond.

Gone was the green vehemence of the Glowing Sea, its passageway a gentle vanguard for the deep jaws of hell that only mankind's wrath could spawn. The Red Menace was waiting.

The Prydwen breached the red gauze in slow, grazing motion, emitting a deep rumble like a breathing leviathan in its might. With its fleet of vertibirds to blot out the red light, it was a beast announcing its presence without mercy, ominous in its gait and irrevocable in its intent.

They were now deep in enemy territory, at the point of no return, challenging the lords of the land, daring them to come forth.

The war had finally begun.

 _War never changes,_ the dark presence whispered.

* * *

 **A/N:** I accidentally forgot to upload over here, so if you follow both on AO3 and FanFic, but prefer to read here, then sorry! Scatterbrained.

-Danse's comment on Maxson taking out the deathclaw with a combat knife is in-game. So yes, it's lore and not just legend. According to Danse, anyway.


	60. Steelfall

Forewarning: Violence and distressing content. This chapter deals with torture, so if you're affected or triggered by that, please read at your own discretion.

* * *

 **Steelfall**

* * *

Blood. The initiate thought he would have been desensitized to the smell of it after living in the company of the Dark Bloods for so long, but no. That sharp tang of iron still crinkled his nose with odium.

It was a smell his body instinctively knew was bad, warning him of a wound, or a death, guiding him away from the festering of a diseased carcass or its lurking killer. Yet these raiders had adapted to relish it. Sadomasochist, carnivorous animals.

He watched under a glare of silently blazing hatred as these sadists moved about the camp. Wild. Barbaric. Savage. One was beating a slave in the sand, sampling his raw blood and declaring he wasn't ripe enough for consumption, that pain would ripen him further; two were fucking rabidly against a large boulder for everyone to hear and see, and another was taking advantage of that, sitting nearby watching, jerking himself off.

Animals. The initiate often wondered how Slay and Dark-Drinker kept them in order. The hierarchy of order by force of power, he knew. Not so different from the Brotherhood of Steel, except they followed a code of conduct to keep corruption at bay. These animals had no laws besides the way of the wilds.

Hunger knocked on his stomach, but the gory aroma was quick to convert it to nausea. In an attempt to distract himself from the churning in his gut, he swept his eyes over the camp he and his fellow slaves had been marched to. It was a processing camp, not far from the northern border of Dark Blood territory, where newly drafted slaves were hauled in to determine their fate. Worker, warrior, entertainment, or food.

The initiate had long since been through the process. They had slapped a specimen to his head, engaged him in their primitive rituals that would imbue him with enough radiation resistance to survive what would usually kill within one day of exposure, and enrolled him in the ranks of the workers.

He watched with a weary detachment as droves of people were devoured by the entry gate of barbed fencing, like pre-war Nazi death camps. Droves of innocents marched to their doom, too overwhelmed by the chaos and the cold to fully comprehend the horror they were about to experience. But instead of the biting cold, here it was the bite of radiation.

His detachment slowly wore away into empathy. Watching the young and strong men thrown to the pit of thrashing specimens. The shouting, the panic, the hysteria, pleading, then the futile resistance as the creatures latched around their throats and squeezed them into submission. The convulsions, the pain, the paralysis.

He watched as the women were herded off for entertainment value, most likely to serve as sex-slaves or pretty pieces of meat to mess with in the torture chambers for the youngbloods to practice on. He kept an eye out to check Grace wasn't among those poor women.

The old, ailing, or otherwise useless were passed off as food, even some of the children if they were too resistant to indoctrination. The initiate had no idea where they were taken. All he knew was that they came back as baskets of dripping flesh.

He tore his eyes off the death march before they could settle on one of the children. He couldn't risk locking eyes with one of them, and then carrying that with him for the rest of his life. However much longer that would be.

And then out came the blood, collected in decorative clay bowls, and carried only by the female Dark Bloods.

"They think the nurturing role of a mother will preserve the purity of the blood."

The initiate slid his eyes over to Mole, chained to the fencing by his rigged collar a few metres away from him, picking at his fingernails. His ghoulish features were surfacing at a rapid rate out in the open desert. He looked more Ghoul than human at this point. "Only mothers are allowed to extract the blood for the Dark Sea," Mole added, Ghoul voice jagging on his throat.

"How do you know that?"

Mole chuckled humourlessly, still picking at his nails. "Been out here for months. You learn things." He plucked something out from the bed of his nail. The initiate quickly realised it _was_ his nail. Blood manifested in a small bead, and Mole just stared at it. "They tithe their own blood to 'nurture it', then they'll send it all back to Blood Rock, where their little savage children will worship it by drawing tears from virgin slave girls, get it pure enough for the Spirit People to bless it and infuse it with oil, then just toss it all into the Dark Blood Sea. Whole fucked up process to it." He flicked away his shedded nail without even a hint of mourning for it. "Surprised they don't piss in it too."

With a disgusted exhale, the initiate dumped his head back against the fencing, trying to ignore the abrasion of the whip slashes down his back. He had never seen the Dark Sea. And he hoped he never would. A sea of a thousand liquid dead... "Wonder why they brought us here," he mused aloud after a while.

A wet snort this time. "Don't know. Don't care. Just as long as I get to rest my feet."

"Mhhm," was all the initiate could muster in agreement. His eyelids collapsed gradually as he let the arid heat of the morning suck the moisture from his skin and blister it raw. In the back of his mind, he knew he was due another RadAway dose, knew that his body was dying as he lay there, slowly but surely, his cells shrivelling as the radiation sapped them away, and the heat of the sun beating away his lifeforce. But weren't they all always dying anyway? From the moment they were all born, they were dying.

Fuck life.

"You. Sleeper. Get up."

Again, fuck life. With heart pounding, his eyes peeled open to a muscular woman with a bitter snarl to her upper lip, standing over him with a long mace propped up in the sand. Her dark eyes were blacked out by thick clouds of paint or kohl, and black fingerpaint was striped thrice across the width of her forehead. Her ornamental garb was sparse, showing a generous amount of flesh, and he had to keep his eyes from straying down to the proud presentation of her breasts. She was attractive, in a strong, Amazonian type of way. A handsome woman.

He made a conscious effort to keep from showing his odd attraction. Her ornaments of predatory skulls and dangling vials of blood displayed her higher status among the warriors stationed here. She could even be the ranking leader. Two male warriors stepped up at her sides, reinforcing his guess.

"Get him up," she snapped to the warriors, who hauled the initiate to his feet. One kept a vice grip on his bicep, to steady him or keep him from attacking, the initiate didn't know. Not like he was in any condition to launch an attack, anyway.

"I am called Banshee," the woman spoke sharply. "You are from Brotherhood. Yes?"

His heart pounded louder in his ears. Third-Degree must have sent word with his escort that he was a unique slave with possible intel. He knew his release from torture had been too good to be true.

Too exhausted to lie, the initiate nodded in resignation.

Banshee's mouth quirked in satisfaction. She gestured her guards with her chin before spinning away, elaborate and horrifying mace stomping the ground with each step. "Bring him."

He was dragged by the arms in the woman's wake, worn leather footwraps scraping the sand as he at least attempted to walk himself. He couldn't even turn enough to send Mole a final look of farewell in case this was a one-way trip.

The processing camp was fenced within an outcropping of boulders, which gave it some shred of shelter on the windswept plains of desert. Simple pole tents were erected as barracks for the raiders, while the slaves stayed outside like dogs. Every encampment that the raiders established across the Bloodlands had one requirement: a cave. Without the underground shelter, death was inevitable when the Red Menace awoke.

So it didn't surprise the initiate when he was brought inside a substantial cave, its mouth hidden beneath weedy vines dotted with small red flowers known as redshade. Poisonous, from what he'd heard.

The air inside the cave was a welcome relief, his raspy breath echoing in the cool expanse. With one chin flick from Banshee, the guards let him drop to the stone floor, knees pounding down, shooting pain into the joints. He moaned and fell onto his palms.

"Hear?" Banshee spoke.

He listened. There were faint echoes, voices, the shuffling of feet. A child's grizzle. This was where they brought the children and the ones unfit for labour.

"Cave goes deep. Many chambers. Perfect for this camp."

The initiate didn't understand what she meant. He sat up to frown at her.

The smirk that travelled her lips sickened him even more than the stench of blood on the cave air. "You will hear soon. Third-Degree wants you to hear them."

Hear them? Hear the children being slaughtered? His gut twisted in on itself.

Banshee recognised his dread and oozed closer to him, lowering to his height in a slow squat. "The killings for flesh are fast. Slice, stab, chop. Cut off good parts, throw away rest. No time for fun with them. Demand for flesh across Bloodlands is great." Her face made an eerie slip from sadistic sincerity to deadpan nothing. Her voice was a damp whisper as her lips neared his ear. "But you will hear them suffer, because you defy Third-Degree." As she drew back from his ear, her face once again took on that sincerity. "And no one defies Third-Degree."

He stared unseeing into the finishing smile of her mouth. All of this, just because he wouldn't break to Third-Degree's torture? What were they going to do to these children?

"You can save them," Banshee spoke through his whirling dread. "Just tell me who took Clay-Crawler. Simple."

He didn't know the answer to that. He had repeated it to Third-Degree over and over, through the pain and burning of his flesh until his tongue dried out. All he had was a hunch.

Paladin Danse.

Who else would Elder Maxson trust enough to reconnoitre the Bloodlands and bring back a high profile target for interrogation? If there was ever a job that needed done, and done right, you sent in Paladin Danse, end of story. The paladin was the elder's secret weapon disguised as a simple officer.

But Brotherhood of Steel 101: never turn your back on a brother.

"Your choice." Banshee stood and towered over him, black eyes brimmed with malice. "Begin!" she shouted out.

At once, there were startled yelps and the squeals of children from deeper within the cave. The initiate panted and sobbed a plea at Banshee, who just glared down on him, waiting for him to stop her. He was desperately racking through his brain for something to make her stop it, when the screams pierced through the rock walls.

They were of sheer inhumanity. His ears were broken by them. Even his hands couldn't block them from reaching through his eardrums and into his soul. All that was left of him was a shell with the one sense to hear, and watch as Banshee stood above, accusing him of it all.

* * *

They carried him back outside, a shell still hearing those screams. His collar was chained back to the fence. The sun picked at his skin. The radiation ate him through his pores.

Mole was saying his name, his real name, over and over. He threw a handful of sand at him. Then a bloody fingernail. The initiate just closed his eyes and fell asleep.

He dreamed flashes of Grace, throwing sand at him. Screaming at him. She hated him for killing those people, those children. His subconscious played through multiple scenarios in which they were killed. Gassed. Burned alive in fire. Showered in acid collected from the rains. His subconscious wanted to know the truth. He didn't.

He awoke to the skies. Not the view of the skies. The sound. They began a guttural resonance, and he thought it the Red Menace awakening, moving in over its feeding ground.

But when he twisted his head back as far as his chained collar would allow, he realised it was something to rival even the great firestorm. The raider guards even stopped in their sadism to witness what parted the static clouds.

It was bearing in from the north, moving right for the forward outpost in the Dark Bloods' territory.

"What in deep hell is that?" Mole gawped, collar pulled taut on his neck as he strained to watch.

The initiate did something he thought was beyond him at this point. He smiled. Smiled like he'd never smiled before, just to witness that beautiful beast of a warship. "That, Mole, is liberation in steel."

The great steel leviathan fractured the radioactive sheath of the desert and growled through the arid red sky. She was magnificent, of lethal planes and sharp protrusions, like fangs armouring her hull. Vertibirds prowled her flanks, daring any foolish raiders to open fire from below and be ripped asunder in retaliation. The initiate could just imagine Elder Maxson now, overarching all from his stern vigil, a mighty pillar of wrath and power. Here for vengeance and honour.

Dark-Drinker and Slay must be shaking in their metal boots.

"You're all fucked, now!"

He was beaten profusely back into submission for that, but it was worth every drop of blood he mourned. His brothers and sisters had finally come for the slaves. Come for him. Grace had finally come for him. He was a free man, and these raiders were dead. They just didn't know it yet.

* * *

 _"_ _Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing."_

Ilya remembered the Brotherhood's arrival into the Commonwealth, how she had gazed up at the Prydwen in a fusion of wonder and fear, and how Nick's words at her side had set her skin crawling.

She had wondered what she had aided Danse in bringing upon the land. Now she wondered this again; if the Brotherhood was here to liberate the hundreds, maybe even thousands of slaves here, or just to exterminate the raider uprising at its roots and burn the land into nothing but ash. Thunder rolled across the Prydwen's hull, and she wondered if it was the land protesting their arrival for the very same fear.

But that was why she was here. To keep Maxson in check. If she could.

With darkness in his eyes, Elder Maxson turned from the desert's maw. They grazed over Ilya's with ominous intent as he strode away, sending a shiver down her spine. "Come."

She fell into his wake without word, catching him give a cryptic nod toward a sentry paladin, who saluted at once before dashing away ahead of them.

"The Brotherhood of Steel will drop in first and raze the Dark Bloods' northern border outpost," the elder declared as he led her toward the Flight Deck hatch, thunder competing with his voice. "But I want your Minutemen to drop in the second wave to conduct a final sweep-and-secure while my forces move to pick off satellite camps along the border before they can retreat."

Ilya's hackles flared protectively for her men and women. "You're just telling me this now?"

"There's no time to squabble over the details. They need firsthand experience in the field. The sooner they get that, the sooner they will acclimatize to the new environment." He handed her a Rad-X capsule, which she slammed into her mouth and gulped dry.

"You did this on purpose."

Maxson turned from her to revolve open the hatchway, strong hands making quick work of it, while Ilya always had to put her weight into it. "As I just said, no time." _Oh you sly, hairy bastard._ "Scribe Haylen has been instructed to brief them. They stand armed and ready in the maintenance bay waiting for your final word."

He was right. They needed that firsthand experience, to taste the unique madness of the Dark Bloods on their virgin tongues. But going over her head with it was just all kinds of dirty, and on first engagement?—his tactics were getting dirtier by the day. Why did he have to wave his dick around so much?

As the hatchway was pushed open by his momentum, Ilya sighted the scores of Brotherhood soldiers over his shoulder. All wore power armour, their combat helmets giving them a foreboding menace, prepped for a hard-drop insertion right into the enemy's base. Only one vertibird was still docked, while the rest of the fleet kept to a snug formation around the mothership, buffeting the hot air across the flight deck.

The elder and general braced against the greeting of the radioactive wind, then Maxson hustled down the steps toward his forces and Lancer-Captain Kells standing in waiting. Ilya followed, the gust tearing small strands of hair free from her ponytail. She narrowed her eyes through the lashings of sand that joined her hair.

"All units are ready and eager for your order, Elder," Kells informed with a mountain of pride and dignity.

Maxson issued him a tight nod. "You've all been waiting long enough for your chance to meet the enemy in their true form," he then bellowed to his awaiting men and women, still striding rapidly toward them. He wasn't wasting time with the theatrics, then. "What we've disbanded in the Commonwealth was but a shadow of their madness. And now's _our_ chance to show them that what they awoke was but a shadow of our might. Now's our chance to show them the Brotherhood of Steel! We drop in hard and fast. No quarter. No mercy!"

Lost in the elder's shadow, feeling very much the lap bitch Fowler had said she was, Ilya's blood was bursting with battle fuel. Bloodlust. However estranged she felt from them, these were all her brothers and sisters in arms. She should be dropping in with them.

Kells gestured the elder to a suit of power armour outside the gunship, its casing popped open to ingest an operator. A modest red cape flared from its back-plate, tattered at the fringes, its Brotherhood of Steel emblem faded, but there were marks of repair to its obvious antiquity. Thick stitching running down the flow of its length. It reminded Ilya of the battle scar down Maxson's cheek.

It dawned on her as she watched the young, severe elder shrug off his battlecoat to Kells. He was dropping in with his troops. Showing his teeth, man-to-man with the enemy. She absorbed the boldness of it while watching him move for the armour.

Unveiled, his black jumpsuit uniform showed the full magnitude of his form, sturdy muscles layering the fluid, lethal stride of a panther. He was a powerhouse to rival Danse, yet even more dangerous. Ilya reminded herself that she had broken his nose... and ignored the fact that he had let her.

Retrieving his helmet from the deck, Maxson tucked it up under his metal arm and caught Ilya in his gaze, eyes taut from the sting of the wind, and hard for impending battle. Full-steel clad, he stomped toward her, and her demand to drop with them was held on her tongue. He was... impressive. Imposing. Even more so.

"Ready your men, Paladin," he advised, looming over her. "We'll storm through and clear the primary threats for you before moving out across the border. This vertibird has been reserved for your use and will be standing-by to assist if you need it. Though I expect the outpost to be fully secured by the time we return."

Before Ilya could make her demand, Kells broke in over her. "Elder, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist you enter the battlefield via the vertibird. While I've made it clear how unhappy I am about you taking up personal command of the operation, I agreed not to interfere unless your life was at serious risk. But you're too important to the Brotherhood of Steel for me to allow you to endanger yourself on the front lines."

Maxson regarded his captain with knowing patience. He had obviously expected this at some point. "I figured you would object, Kells."

The captain maintained his rigid stance, braving the risk of a reprimand from his supreme commander. Ilya had to admire his sense of duty to the elder, even against the elder's own will. "It's my job to ensure your safety, sir, and I intend to stand firm. Even if it means I must risk my charge as captain of this vessel and her crew. I hereby forbid my men from allowing you to make a hard-drop in with them. If you insist, I take full responsibility for their actions under my command. If you continue to insist, you will have to relinquish me of my command... sir."

To Ilya's shock, and the soldiers who stood in waiting, Maxson held onto his patience and delivered the captain a long, contemplative stare. He flicked a look back at the soldiers, and it stuck for a moment. Ilya thought she sensed a longing in him before he drew in a sigh and returned his intense focus to the captain.

"You needn't be concerned for your charge, Captain. I won't force that situation on you. Keep the Prydwen safe. Ad victoriam." Resigned, he performed a quick salute, which Kells mirrored in powerful enthusiasm, and then spun in his armour toward the vertibird, giving his soldiers a parting nod before stepping aboard. They all gave their parting gifts in return—mournful nods and salutes. They had all been impassioned to drop with their elder, only to have the honour snatched away at the last moment.

If Captain Kells was contrite to be the snatcher, he didn't show it. "Standby for drop!" There was a lurch to the air. The Prydwen was dropping altitude for the combat insertion.

Ilya's pulse ignited. "Wait." She bypassed Kells and hustled for Maxson's vertibird. "Elder, requesting permission to join the fight."

He snapped to her from inspecting his laser rifle, eyes ablaze. "Absolutely not. You're needed for the second wave. You will get your chance then."

"They don't need me to lead them in—" _They don't WANT me to lead them_ "—I can receive my forces after the outpost is stormed. One vertibird will take time to fly in an entire company of soldiers. I'm more useful on the front lines and you know it."

Kells strode at her, bristling at her insubordination. "You will address your elder with the proper respect, Paladin!"

"Yes, Captain." Pulsing her jaw and swallowing her pride, Ilya honed back in on Maxson, whose brow was trenched deeply at her. "Elder, please. I would like the chance to meet the enemy in first engagement."

He was unyielding. "Denied. You're too important an asset to be allowed on the front lines. You will remain here until we have cleared the way for you. That's the end of it."

Her limbs tightened, boots rooting her to the deck. He had no qualms sending her to Fort Strong with Danse, a two-soldier army against a horde of super mutants to test her ability. No qualms sending her into the Institute, alone and blind, his one key for infiltration. No qualms in the Glowing Sea. What had changed? If she bit the dust, he could just absorb the Minutemen into his own empire with one speech.

"You're going in. So am I. I won't stay here while my brothers and sisters fight and risk their lives. Your scouts didn't spot any substantial threats, but we both know that doesn't mean much from an aerial scan. Who knows what they have waiting for us down there? Neriah and Ketway haven't developed a counter-measure against those specimens, which leaves us vulnerable against the enemy's edge. And I've seen first-hand how dangerous that edge is. I know you know what it feels like to stay behind, so don't force me through the same agony you feel every time your men go to battle without you. We're both soldiers, so this is my fight as much as it is yours!"

"Paladin!" Kells berated after her rant, moving to snatch her arm, but the raising of Maxson's metal hand pulled at his leash.

The elder's gaze never strayed from hers. "If you insist on joining the battle, then it will be on these conditions: you are under my command, you will stay at my side, and you will not defy a single order I give you. Are we clear?"

"Yes, Elder."

"Good. Now mount your power armour and be back at the vertibird at once. You have less than two minutes before we approach the drop zone. We will not wait for you."

Ilya wasn't stupid enough to push her luck and request dropping in with the troops. If he wanted to keep her on a short leash and deploy from his vertibird, then fine. As long as she got to see some action. She had been recuperating from her mental breakdown enough. It had been far too long.

She sprinted off the flight deck and clawed her way up the rungs like a cat on Jet, continuing her sprint for the maintenance bay. Now came the dilemma. Her personal standard-issue power armour in bay three, or Danse's upgraded and modified power armour in bay one? She would be expected to take Danse's. It would only raise suspicion of a guilty conscience if she took her own. But she had to consult with that conscience for a moment.

Would it be wrong to take his armour into battle? Or would it be an honour? What if she got it damaged? Danse would never admit it, but if she returned it to him in poor shape, he would resent her for it. Wouldn't he?

Swearing at her indecision, she hustled for her own suit in bay three and leapt inside its embrace, only remembering now how heavy and constricting it felt, and how she much preferred agility over strength in combat. But Maxson made himself clear.

After making a detour for her armaments, she was back out on the flight deck, helmet locked, laser rifle loaded, sidearm slotted, poison machete from the depths of the dark blood sheathed. She remembered Doom-Guy naming it Kremvh's Tooth. And she remembered the sound he made when it sliced away his life.

Maxson eyed her suspiciously as she stepped up to the gunship, trickled his gaze over her armour to inspect its condition, but said nothing on the matter of using her own armour over Danse's. He nodded and dropped on his helmet, sealing the clamps with a resounding click.

"Lock your comms to frequency alpha," his voice echoed over the company-wide channel. Ilya tended to her suit's onboard systems and did just that. "Prepare for drop!" he yelled next to his awaiting warriors, voice coarse and shaded through the helmet's audio filter. "Steel be with us!"

Captain Kells began a countdown for the soldiers, while the vertibird pilot worked at deploying from the docking arms. Clarity of what was coming solidified in Ilya's mind. With the time to think, pre-battle nerves kicked in with it. She had made dozens of combat drops before, both in pre-war and post-war, but the feeling of mortality never got old. Ironic.

In the interlude, she turned her shoulder back to Maxson on the minigun, the wind turning his cape into a billowing red wing.

"Hey, thank you," she offered sincerely.

He angled his head, just enough to show he had heard her above the howl of the winds and the clanking of the docking mechanism, but said nothing in return, helmet back to watching his soldiers.

Ilya yearned for Danse at her side even more. This was his fight too.

Thunder roared. The captain gave the final order. The elder smashed his fist to his chest.

"Ad Victoriam!"

The clash of metal on metal was deafening even through the gale as each soldier returned the salute. "AD VICTORIAM!"

The troopers dropped feet-first from the flight deck to plunge into the sandscape below, not a single one of them hesitating to break the perfect tandem of their drop. They were magnificent and inspiring, utterly devoted to each other. Ilya wished she could join them.

The vertibird dropped from the docking arms with a sickening lurch, catching its altitude after a moment of freefall and forcing Ilya's and Maxson's power armour hydraulics to compensate at the knee joints.

"Bring her around. Hard and sharp," Maxson urged the pilot, any trace of desperation to join his men buried deep beneath staunch command.

Ilya welded her metal hands to the overhead supports as the gunship banked cruelly, chasing the drop zone. As it levelled out, she could only just make out the camp below, stormed by laser and steel.

"Visibility's too compromised for air-support!" Maxson called over to her, minigun bearing in but silent. "Prepare to drop in, Paladin!"

"Let me at 'em," she confirmed, tuning into her adrenaline, and tuning out her fears. Time to crack bone.

"On my mark." Maxson waited for the pilot to make another pass, then began a terse countdown for their drop. This time, she could hear it in his voice. What made a man mad enough to jump into a bloodbath.

Humanity.

"Drop!"

They dropped into hell.

* * *

 **A/N:** On the reference to Nazi death camps, I'm not sure if WWII history is the same in the Fallout verse, but my mind just went straight to the death camps when I was describing the processing camp. I've done a lot of study on the Holocaust and it was just natural for me to pull inspiration from that, however grim it was. As for the initiate's mind going there, many people who join the military for the right reasons usually have interest in war history, and the Brotherhood likely have archives on pre-war history. Danse is an example, since he likes to spout history lessons to you in the game...


	61. Warfall

Warning: Graphic violence, gore, and disturbing content. I also want to apologize to those of you who read my previous chapter before I put up the content warning. A helpful reader suggested I put one up, and I regret that I didn't think to do it before publishing. So if you were jarred by the torture scene in that chapter, I'm really sorry.  
But for those of you who are sick fucks like me and love a good bloody mess, enjoy! :P

* * *

 **Warfall**

* * *

Landfall rushed them.

Power armour pulverized the sand in twin plumes, right in the heart of the outpost. The impact rolled brutally up her body, and Ilya bared her teeth in her helmet as she collected her bearings, metal fist in the sand.

Battle was thick in the air around them, a dissonance of hardened honour clashing with that of fervent madness. Cries and shouts of chaos. In the open, their impact became the centre of all vicious intent. A bold move. Kells would not approve of Maxson's choice of landing zones. But Kells wasn't the elder.

She heard the electric whir of Maxson's hydraulics as he rose behind her to take up battle, laser rifle already picking off targets in red bursts.

The world turned mute but for the echo of her breath for a moment. A red cloak flared. Sparks of red muzzle-flash surrounding her. Spatterings of red gore. Red cries. Red sand. Red sky. Red rage. Her vision. Red.

Red.

Ilya stood upright and brought her weapon to bear on the first raider unlucky enough to enter her sights. A red spear of laser set skin and armour alight, eating up the scream that spewed forth from tormented lips. Her first kill in so long. Too long. Her bared teeth turned to a grin.

"Do what you do best! Kill anything that moves!" she heard Maxson call out at her side, his voice rough to cut through the howls of dust and battle. "But stay in my sight!" His rifle warped off unrelenting fire as he cut down charging raiders in his view, aim snapping from target to target with the quick precision of a snake.

Kill. That was what she did best. Ilya spread out to give a rough five metres between them, then unleashed on her share of the meat. Her Tooth machete slid out from its sheath to compliment the firepower of her laser rifle, adding a sharp chime of metal to the air. While those at range were turned to fire and ash, those in close-quarters were blocked, slashed and stabbed to crippled wrecks. It took little effort in her power armour to dual wield.

The raiders wielded an array of weapons, from simple machetes and spears to elaborate war maces, axes, and double-edged daggers. Some threw smaller knives and hatchets, all clinking benignly on steel armour. Whatever they wielded, they all just provided Ilya and Maxson a bountiful supply of dead bodies, and they were piling up into a circular layer of gore around them.

Together, they were untouchable.

The sacrificial rage was madness. Wasteful. But it gave clarity on just how many forces they had to spare with such tactics.

They could afford a war of attrition. The Brotherhood could not.

Killing her thoughts, Ilya focused on combat and swished her blade across the throat of a raider launching his machete at Maxson's blindside. His warpainted face twitched, his breath choked on blood and bubbled up through the gash, and eyes were bulging at her before his limbs failed him and sent him to the soil. Another charging her was lasered down into a flaming skeleton, crisped to black. Then another. The next met her blade again, intimately. And the next, her upward arc slicing him from groin to neck. She connected her following strike into a downward crest, carving a raider through the torso.

Laser. Blade. Repeat. Guts spilled. Blood painted her. She felt the thrill in her own blood and revelled in it. Everything else in her lost, broken world became backdrop noise. Only the slaying mattered. She had missed this.

At her back, she could hear the metallic clanks and grunts of Maxson entering close-quarters combat, interspersed with the guttural cries of pain that were only cut off midway to his point-blank laser fire. She didn't dare break her focus to peek at his tally of dead bodies, but the competitive itch was strong to.

Bullets peppered her armour, the end of a burst pinging off her helmet and tilting her head off centre. Took them long enough to resort to firearms. "We're under fire!" she alerted shrilly.

The sound of rounds ricocheting off Maxson followed suit. "Your grasp of the obvious is inspiring!" he snapped back. Well that was a fancy way of saying 'no shit.'

The company-wide channel broke its silence as a woman's voice barked out. Groves. "All forces, converge on Elder Maxson!"

More ballistics sailed the air as the raiders upped their arsenal, and they were focusing on Maxson. Rounds sparked off his plating, and he let out a growl of pain upon returning fire. But even he couldn't return fire on all flanks. On reflex, Ilya slotted her machete and took her rifle in both hands, her aim sniffing out the arms bearers while she moved into Maxson's right flank, soaking up rounds for him while he could focus on the others. They slowly rotated as one, sharing the load as a revolving laser turret. But their power armour wouldn't hold out forever under constant flak.

"Ad Victoriam!"

For a moment, Ilya thought it was Danse yelling that out. Moving to the tempo of his war-cry in battle was second nature to her. But Maxson reached a hand back to yank her out of her wistful illusion, and out of the path of a molotov. She rolled her shoulder into his yank, twisting herself to safety as the flaming bottle splintered through the sand and burped into fire.

It set off a trend. Two more molotovs incoming.

"Move!" Maxson warned.

They spun apart, motions heavy in the suits. Ilya caught sight of one molotov stalled midair into a harmless fireball by Maxson's aim. He was good. But the other was lobbed at his blindside, unavoidable. Ethanol splashed his steel boots and fire licked up his legs. His armour's ablative coating and fire resistant material beneath the plating would protect him, but only for so long. Still, he held his ground, ignoring the growth of flame on him and continuing to trade fire with the surrounding raiders.

Ilya scanned around. The raiders saw him as the bigger threat. The fucker. She told herself it was because of his cloak and not his skill. Her competitive ego aside, she had to take the pressure off him somehow. Seeing only sand and a pit of raiders, she was about to move back to his flank and eat bullets for him again, when another soaring molotov provided a solution.

Instead of moving to dodge, she moved to catch. If not for her power armour, attempting it would be what Danse would call tactically stupid. But she simply snatched the bottle from the air, flaming rag only brushing at her metal hand as she hurled it back above a mass of four or five raiders all huddled around a knoll of rock.

They condensed back behind the rock, but there were too many to all take up behind the same position. Ilya caught the soaring molotov in her sights and squeezed her trigger. Fiery debris rained upon the huddle, and she watched in satisfaction as it caught at their limbs and spread up their scanty leathers. Deranged howls of agony came next. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to watch the show.

The event earned her some vengeful attention, drawing it away from Maxson. Bullets stormed her armour like a metal hurricane. She groaned as the impacts pounded against her power armour and bruised her skin, suddenly remembering how much of a bitch it was to take a salvo even in the suit.

A particularly well-placed shot caught her in the back between the plates, reverberating into the pliable ballistic fibre lining the suit's interior. Pain blared up her spine, pushing out a sharp cry with the air that vacated her lungs. She fell to a knee, fighting for a breath.

Just as she dropped, an arrow whistled over her helmet.

An arrow? It drew her eye as it plunged into the metal chestplate of a raider and catapulted him back into the sand. A steel tip might penetrate rusted metal armour, but she doubted it would have even dented the steel alloy of her power armour.

Boom. The raider's chest erupted from within, his chestplate splintering as wet chunks of his meat were spat across the sand, burned blood like a slap of paint.

Explosive arrowheads. Ilya swore. Outstanding, Danse would have said.

A snap of laser fire at her side, and Maxson was above her, vaporising the crossbow wielder before he could fire another arrow upon her.

"On your feet, soldier!"

Straining against bullets, she managed it, her armour lifting most of the burden for her. "I'm up!"

Maxson turned and nudged his back against hers with a clack of their plating, shielding her damaged back and exchanging fire with unyielding tenacity. They formed back into their laser turret tactic, shooting out or catching molotovs and other miscellaneous objects when they could. They just had to hold out a little longer.

Ilya, in the fray of backhanding off a woman who had stubbornly adhered herself to her shoulder, noticed a sliver of order among the chaos. A batch of raiders were filing out into a formation, where in the centre, something was hefted by two larger men clad in metal and bones. Ilya tried to split her focus between keeping fire on the swarm and watching this new occurrence. She realised too late what the contraption was. A mobile spear catapult.

"Maxson!" she called in warning, moving to urge him aside with her free hand while her rifle snapped off lasers in a desperate volley. She felt Maxson move with the urge of her push just as the raider operator on the spear-turret fired. At them both.

Two savage spears were launched with chilling speed, catching her off guard. She hadn't caught sight of the double-spear payload.

Resigning fire, she spun away, but the spread of the two spears was too wide. The second spear clipped her across the rib of her torso plating, bucking into her with the horrid sound of grated metal. As she reeled from the impact, glowing embers flecked the air before her vision turned to sand, hands catching her fall to the ground.

The fuck _was_ that? Her Geiger counter was whining as radiation spilled through the breach to her suit. Still assailed by fire, she had a split second to inspect the damage on her side. A generous chunk of steel had been sheared out of her torso, grazed by hot, molten liquid. The spear had been superheated, like a brand with the one purpose of melting through Brotherhood steel.

These raiders were innovative and resourceful. A very dangerous combo.

She was upright with a growl, whirling on the spear catapult to unleash her fire before the raiders could load it up with two more spears. Metal shields flanked the catapult's frame, protecting the operators, but her laser struck with crackshot accuracy, wearing away at the rusted material with consecutive wounds. Danse didn't call her his crackshot knight for nothing.

Having lost sight of Maxson, the sudden pressure of his armour bumping against her back startled her.

"Harper! Molotov!" he yelled over her shoulder, then his metal hand clasping a burning bottle slipped into her peripheral view. He must have caught it and saved her hide while she was busy with the catapult.

"Nice!" Catching his toss, Ilya pitched it long, right for the catapult. Just before impact, the operator figured he may as well get a final shot off before going to hell. Twin spears were flung at her and Maxson a second time.

"Down!" they both screamed at each other.

They dropped a knee in tandem. The spears flew overhead, narrowly missing their helmets. The telltale sound of bodies impaled by superheated spearheads soon followed, but Ilya and Maxson didn't spare them the courtesy of looking.

Opening fire, they advanced on the burning catapult, shooting down raiders that dived to man it while the previous operators still burned and flailed alive. Their shrieks for mercy fell on deaf ears. Charring, writhing bodies were just kicked and barged aside by raider brethren in order to load up two more spears on the incoming soldiers.

Their efforts were in vain. The two soldiers entered the realm of the fires like metal hellspawns delivering death. They lasered down raiders clambering to swing the catapult onto target, and stomped those already taken by fire, squirming in the black sand. Flesh dripped from bone and clotted to boot underfoot.

Ilya was thankful she couldn't smell their agony—it saved her conscience.

Because it would have made her smile.

While Maxson stood her vanguard, trading shots with the raiders, Ilya manned the catapult, feeding two more spears into its load. She noticed on glance that the spearheads were pre-heated in their storage racks. Unfamiliar with such ancient technology from the bronze ages, it took Ilya a moment to suss out the firing mechanism.

Maxson frothed impatience. "Harper! Why are you wasting time on that thing? Your laser rifle is much more effective!" He sidestepped a lunging raider and knocked him down with an oversized elbow, then promptly stood on him as if he were just a bug. "Leave it!"

Ignoring him, she pulled back the torque and took aim at the thickest mass of raiders she could see through the flickers of fire around her. The catapult spat out the dual spears with a thump that rattled its metallic frame. She eyed the spears in anticipation, watching as they pounded through multiple bodies per spear, piercing them like butter. The stacks of bodies were thrown back several metres like skewered raider kebabs. Toasted and seasoned with bloody sand.

Ilya disturbingly wondered if that was a Dark Blood cannibal dish.

"Hmph. Effective long-range riot control, maybe," she heard Maxson mutter through a private channel. "Now get back to me."

"Yes, sir," Ilya grinned tartly and took up her place on his six once again. She made sure to bump up against his back with unnecessary force, then slapped out a small flame wriggling its way up his cloak. He grunted in aggravation, but said nothing.

They resumed their immobile defence, suppressing raiders back behind metal or wooden shacks, craggy boulders, or rabbit-hole caves that sprouted up from the dry earth. Their numbers were staggering, and it made up for their lack of heavy defences. Ilya began to stress for her fusion cell count. Falling back on her 10mm wouldn't cut it unless she made every shot count, and that was a bitch when under constant fire.

"Sorry for the holdup, sir," Groves' voice chimed over the main channel. "Cavalry inbound."

Right on cue, the cavalry of steel and laser descended on the surrounding raiders, scattering them into disarray. The flak was finally lifted from Ilya and Maxson, allowing them to move with the main force and storm through the rest of the outpost. They didn't need much guidance from Maxson or their superiors over the main channel, they all ploughed through the raiders as one autonomous machine of shock and awe tactics. That was the Brotherhood's specialty.

It felt good to be part of such a ride. Too good.

Screams of rage and fear took to the camp like the wildfire that both opposing forces had ignited. In the lawless pit of war, there was no compassion, no mercy. Just raw, unfiltered death, and the brother or sister beside you.

That was when Ilya spotted the slaves fleeing from the burning shacks. They huddled in groups, finding any spot of safety they could to wait out the roughshod liberation of the camp. They reached and groped at each other for comfort, eyes agape with terror, faces streaked with tears that made tracks down sooty, gaunt cheeks. Some of the men were trying to be strong for those that had either had any residue of strength beaten or worn out of them, taking the lead and giving words of comfort and assurance. But Ilya saw the stark fear in their eyes.

 _You're safe now. We're here to save you._

But then she began to see the spatterings of innocence amongst the condemned. Slave bodies joined the dead. Caught in the crossfire, they were gored by a diversity of weapons. Bullets, spears, arrows, fire, shrapnel... and laser burns.

Ilya's ardour to flow with the main force waned at the sight of those unfortunate souls. War was such a wretched thing.

Embedded in the flow of battle, she barely heard when Maxson ordered his forces to regroup at the southern exit of the vast camp. A clump of officers merged into his wake, moving in a steady, loping gait for the rendezvous. He picked her out amongst the venerating horde around him.

"Harper."

Like a good dog, she attached herself to his side.

"Casualties?" he then incited his ranking officer.

It was Groves, and she shouldered her way up cosy to Ilya. Too cosy. "Two knights, Elder. Guerrero and Kyle. Both to napalm explosive arrows. Their remains are being prepped for airlift."

"Their sacrifice will be avenged," Maxson responded, the oath in his voice impenetrable. It had to be, in order to distil conviction in his men. Ilya took note.

"Without a doubt, sir. We'll inscribe their names on the first Fat Man shells we drop on their base of operations."

"Hm. A fitting send-off," Maxson agreed, letting his fondness of the idea colour his tone. "I think Guerrero and Kyle would appreciate the chance to exact revenge in such a bold fashion. In fact, let's make that a tradition of this war. Every soldier to fall to these monsters and their ilk will earn their place in our final assault. An inspired idea, Star Paladin Groves."

"Thank you, sir." The woman seemed to inflate at Ilya's shoulder, growing a fraction taller in her armour. Ilya had to hand it to her, it was a badass idea. And very Brotherhood-ly.

"And I must say, Elder," Groves elongated their interaction, "I saw the killing ground you left behind. A mighty body-count, sir. While I had my concerns with your decision to drop ahead of us and scatter their defences—as it is my job to be concerned for your safety, sir—I had every confidence that you'd tear them a new one. Lancer-Captain Kells might not agree, but it was an honour to see you in action, Elder."

Brown-noser, Ilya eyerolled.

The elder was silent a moment as they trotted south. "The honour was mine to fight alongside such valiant men and women... But you've forgotten that it was Paladin Harper who insured my safety. There's no doubt in my mind that I would have been felled were it not for her remarkable talent in combat. Half of that body-count belonged to her."

 _Only half?_ Ilya heard herself recoil, before she even processed the fact that Maxson had bitch-slapped Groves back into place in favour of _her_. If his grand plan was to pit the two women against each other in a catfight over his favour, then he was going the right way about it.

Ilya could almost feel the spite rolling off Groves' plating before she responded. "As you say, Elder Maxson." Her helmet nudged down to Ilya in a cursory glance. "Harper, you have my gratitude for keeping the elder safe. I commend your efforts." The candour of her tone just passed the mark.

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am."

 _What a mock-up circle-jerk session..._

As the cavalcade of stomping steel reached the rendezvous, Maxson collected the remainder of his officers, receiving updates and supplying orders. Vertibirds made dusty touchdowns outside the southern gates of razor wire and ornate vials and flasks of dark blood. With the chance to breathe without the risk of choking on a bullet or arrow, Ilya took the luxury of studying her surroundings.

Where before she had only seen sand, raiders, and fire, now she saw the outpost in its full glory, despite the Brotherhood razing it to the ground. Folds of auburn rock encased the outer fencing, sheltering the centre of the camp from the worst of the sandstorms. Rimming around the edges of the camp in a circular structure were rustic shacks or barracks, pole tents, and compacted-clay dwellings which resembled igloos. There were many sparring pits, which she imagined were not only for training warriors, but for pitting slaves and creatures against each other for shits and giggles. She also didn't miss the central pit focalised by three large pyres, each complete with a crucifying pole. Ebonized skeletons hung morosely by the wrists. One was that of a child.

Refreshed anger thundered in her chest. But somehow, Ilya knew that crucifixion was only the start of what the Dark Bloods could do to torture a soul. Those skeletons were only up there as a reminder for the slaves.

"No specimen sightings," she heard Maxson murmur studiously, and turned her attention back to his gathering. She could barely see his bullet-riddled cape through the massing. "It does raise concerns. Be vigilant. I'm convinced we haven't yet witnessed their full potential. Intelligent leaders know to hold their best cards close to their chests until the enemy shows its teeth."

"Good thing we haven't played our biggest cards yet, then. They're in for one hell of a wake-up call if they seriously think they can outplay the Brotherhood." That sounded like Knight-Sergeant Muller, Danse's favourite. Sarcasm. Ilya had wondered why he hadn't taken the chance to gloat in her face of Danse's 'betrayal.'

Elder Maxson made no response, not even to browbeat the sergeant back into his place. He tilted his helmet skyward for a moment, perhaps observing the weather, or searching for answers in the great unknown. Then his resolve snapped his head back to his awaiting soldiers. "We move out," he announced simply.

Groves carried it out with a nod. "You heard the elder. Board the 'birds. We're not done yet! Not until every raider along this border is vaporized!"

As the soldiers dispersed, Ilya strode at the elder just as he intended to stride at her. The result was a near-miss helmet-kiss. Which would have been awkward as all fuck.

"What about the slaves?" she demanded tightly.

"What about them?" he retorted sharply in return. "We're not here for them. There could be thousands of them out in this desert, and we don't have the resources to facilitate them all. The best we can do for them is provide their freedom. From there, their fate is their own."

She rattled her head side-to-side. "No. Not good enough. These people need food and medical attention or they'll die."

"I don't have time to debate this with you." To her vexation, he turned a shoulder on her, war-torn cape almost slapping her in the helmet. "Do what you want with them with your Minutemen's supplies, but don't expect the Brotherhood to replenish your wasted stockpiles."

She kept pace with his stride, fuming. "You're a heartless fuck. You hear me?"

There was a beat of silence as he approached his vertibird outside the gates. "And you're lucky that the sight of spilled raider blood has put me in such a forgiving mood, _Paladin._ " That slid out through his teeth, the slight growl on the word stressing his roused temper. He stepped up into the gunship's troop load and rotated his armour toward her. She wondered what expression his helmet kept hidden.

"You have a job to do. Take your Minutemen, and make certain you wipe this outpost clean of every single one of these dirty heathens. I don't want to so much as smell a single one of them left alive." There was that _charmingly_ violent Brotherhood bigotry. But for once, Ilya agreed with it, the image of those skeletons surging over her.

"Consider them vaporized," she growled darkly.

With an appraising nod, he bashed his steel fist against the hull, signalling the pilot for takeoff.

Ilya stood and watched the fleet take to the rusted sky, then treaded sand back into the outpost to receive the first load of her forces. Forces that despised their general.

* * *

 **A/N:** So I burned through this one fast, just because action is more my forte and I get really into it. So because this update is sooner than usual, make sure you didn't miss the last chapter!

-Sorry to those of you who have a hard time with graphic violence. As we all know, real war isn't all rainbows and acrobats, its brutal and gory. I really wanted to capture that. As my other works are more space-operas with romanticised abilities and fancy tech, Fury Blood is more grounded and back-to-basics, and in terms of war, that means lots of monkey-shit-fights. But at the same time, rainbows and acrobats are always fun, so I had to fit a little of it in with some Ilya/Maxson shenanigans. You know me by now :P


	62. Castle of Glass

**Warning:** Graphic violence and disturbing content

* * *

 **Castle of Glass**

* * *

Hope.

A black mass of hope in the form of smoke undulated off the distant outpost as vertibirds took to the air, splitting into multiple squadrons and veering for the outlying camps. The sight gave the initiate something to latch onto as he and his fellow slaves were hustled and bundled. Something like hope.

They had all heard the carriage on the wind. The bloodcurdling roars and screams of battle were like the ambiance of Hell breaching into reality. He had seen battle before since joining the Brotherhood, but never _heard_ it quite like that. Was that what it sounded like back when the world came to an end in The Great War?

Not only that, but the shrieks of pain within that everflowing package of battlecries took him back to that cave. Those children. Their harrowed screams were adhered to his memory. If he closed his eyes for too long, they grew louder in his head.

Harsh hands on his shoulders gave a shove, and he was suddenly piled into a barbed cage with a dozen others, skinning his knees on wooden planks. Familiar scabbed hands helped him upright, and then he was looking into equally familiar eyes, blackened at the rims as Ghoulification took hold.

Mole pinched a frown at him. "Are your people coming to save us, boy?" His voice was squeezed by a quiet desperation.

"Yeah, Mole," the initiate reassured, pushed aside as more slaves were tossed in with them. Mole's eyes were glued to him still, unseeing of anything else. The initiate took hold of his frail shoulders to increase the weight of his absolute belief in the Brotherhood. "They're coming for us. They're gonna get us out of here."

A fist smacked on the cage, startling the two. One of the guards was leering down at them, grinning with teeth that were blotted by decay.

"No one save you," he mocked, giving a wicked chuckle. Their hope amused him. "We take you far away. Into Rad-dragon territory, to Screaming Craters." His glassy, inebriated eyes locked onto the initiate. "No one ever save you. Third-Degree have many plans for you." The eyes then drifted over to Mole. "You? Brotherhood not save you. You infected by rad-demons. Brotherhood kill rad-demons." His throaty laugh erupted into bursts of coughs and saliva, then a bout of hysteria as he slapped the cage repeatedly to rattle them further, laughing louder and louder with every flinch they gave.

"What does he mean?" Mole fretted. "The Brotherhood kills Ghouls?"

The initiate was caught off guard by the question, and horror fell into Mole's eyes at the look of pained truth the initiate couldn't cover in time. He hadn't known the Brotherhood of Steel's stance on Ghouls? The initiate supposed the organisation was still an enigma to the Commonwealth, especially to settlers whose only source of news was rumours through trader caravans.

He increased his grip on Mole's shoulders. "Listen, they won't hurt you. I'll talk to them, explain that you're a friend. They'll understand. Don't worry."

The horror faded a little from Mole's eyes, but it still lingered in those darkening edges, like storm clouds overshadowing clear skies.

The guards sealed the cage door with a clang, and the connected wagons gave a sudden lurch as the sabretusks growled and hauled the load along on its treads with their burly strength. They were evacuating the slaves from the camp before the vertibirds arrived, too useful a resource to be allowed liberation. Not many slaves had even bothered fighting back as they were herded to the wagons. Too lost to the well of their depression to even risk the idea of hope. Like it was a burden that would only end up betraying them.

Well, the initiate wasn't down that well yet. He had fought back. With every remaining ounce of himself. He had made use of the hand-to-hand combat training Paladin Danse had drilled into him, and even managed to draw blood from one of the guards by ramming a sharp edge of his metal collar into the bastard's chin. He was lucky he hadn't set off the built-in explosive by accident, but the risk was worth it just to draw blood from _them_ for a change. But then the guards threatened to dismember his most valued organ. And he knew as a witness on several occasions that they would, and then force him to eat it.

That wouldn't be worth it.

He and Mole huddled together in a corner of the cage, unable to stand in its shallow heights. They were cramped with others who stared on at the carnage taking hold of the desert behind them. The vertibird squadron heading for their processing camp was still a ways out, like a flock of distant ravens gliding leisurely on the wind. By the time they hit the camp, the slave wagons would be shrouded in desert dust and hidden behind rolling dunes.

The initiate considered the slaves in the cage with him and Mole, not knowing any of their names or slave dubs; he made an effort not to get close to anyone else but Mole, knowing it would only hurt more. There was still hope in their despondent eyes, he saw, but it ebbed with each roll of the treads beneath the wagon, pulled away the further they moved from the camp.

But not him. He was just thankful to be moving as far away from that child-murderess Banshee as possible.

Because the Brotherhood _would_ come for them. They would see the wagon treads in the sand before the wind stole them. They would track them. The initiate refused to give up hope. He wasn't going to end up a lifeless shell like these other slaves, empty of any fight. He was a Brotherhood soldier.

"They're gonna come for us," he heard himself tell the others. They all looked to him, hesitant to hope. "They will," he insisted. Gradually, their hesitant faces lifted and hope, even if small, was seeded.

The initiate wondered if he had just made a mistake.

Mole eventually made a hoarse murmur beside him, before he spoke his thoughts. "The guard. He said we were going to the Screaming Craters. You ever been there, boy?"

He shook his head. "No. What are they?"

The irradiated man licked craggy lips and scooted a glance at the nearest guard jogging beside the wagon. "That's a story I'll save to fill in a long night of hunger pains. But it's what he said before that that's got my skin crawling..."

Too exhausted to even recall the guard's words, the initiate just shook his head in ignorance.

"He said the craters are in rad-dragon territory," Mole clarified, speaking slowly for effect. He fell silent to let that sink in, watching the initiate's face pull with unease.

"Rad-dragons...? What are they?"

"Things I thought were just myths from slave tales." He shrugged vaguely, faded eyes swaying past the initiate to stare out at the ravaged landscape. "And I really hope they're still just myths."

* * *

Ilya paced the sand in her power armour, observing as wet blood caked it into a dirty carpet beneath her. She wasn't sure whether she was detesting it or admiring it.

The Minutemen were filing out in the camp's centre before her, her four lieutenants rounding them up into their assigned platoons. She switched between watching them file out and detesting or admiring her bloody boot prints. She still needed a second in command, and was flirting with any excuse not to choose Fowler—the obvious choice.

She sent a look his way as he stood at attention at the head of his platoon, suited up in Brotherhood-provided blue jumpsuit uniform, armed in full combat armour, and completed with a thick rawhide duster layered over to uphold his freedom-fighter roots against the Brotherhood stricture. Most of the others had followed his example, tailoring their mandatory uniforms—per Maxson's order—with bold displays of pride in their cause. Flairs of blue, leather gear, cherished satchels and utility packs, rawhide militia hats beneath headscarfs, capped beanies, decorated gas masks, and other lucky charms in various forms. Ilya hoped it wasn't the first glimmer of a revolt. Yet she couldn't help but admire their rebellious move. It was a big 'fuck you' to Maxson. She wasn't one to judge in that department.

The men and women were visibly unsettled by the aftermath of the battle. Broadened eyes flitted from corpse to corpse where guts, entrails, and butchered limbs were strewn across sand and rock, metal and wood. Bared and burned skeletons from laser scoring were still crackling in flames and trailing smoke, their flesh incinerated away into the wind. Some bodies were still recognisable, but seared through the chest with a single laser, or the face melted off and skewered by a well-placed shot. Some were just trampled flat by the stampede of power armour, the outlines of their figures stretched and distorted. Squirts of their blood and bodily fluids matted the sand in gory outlines. It was a chilling and sickening sight even to Ilya.

These Minutemen had all seen action protecting their homes in the Commonwealth, but to see it all condensed like this, death piled upon stinking death, the coagulated remains meshing into one pit to rot the air, it was clearly overbearing for some of them. One bent over on his knees, bile pouring from his mouth. That set off a woman across from him, her hand darting up to block her retching mouth, though the gunk erupted out through her fingers, spraying the man in front of her. He swore at her. She swore back between a sob. The platoon leader barked them into silence.

Ilya nodded subconsciously. As gnawingly arrogant as he was, Maxson was wise beyond his years. They were still green. Raw. Fledgling soldiers. They had fought skirmishes in the Commonwealth. This was a full-scale war. No holds barred. And it was just getting started.

 _Are they ready for this? Am I?_ As she mused on them, pacing like an edgy lioness in her armour, Fowler was staring back at her. His eyes flashed resentment over the blue bandana wrapping his nose and mouth.

She got it. She was a renegade in their eyes. A back-stabbing assassin. A double-dealing defector. If only they knew.

If only Danse was here.

 _What would he do in this situation?_

He would stay strong, and do his duty, she knew. Conscious of his holotags on her breastbone, Ilya grabbed a seed of calm, and wrapped it in a cold facade. With a click, she unsealed her helmet and pulled it free to face down the resentment meeting her, and to humanise herself to them. Her suit was already breached from damage, and her dose of Rad-X would block off most of the rads. She would still need a session of RadAway by nightfall.

Her thoughts skipped to the condition of the slaves and their radiation sickness, but she tucked them away for now. First, they needed to ensure the camp was fully secured and safe for them to be tended to.

"I know you all want to help these people and get them the care they need, but we have a job to do first," she declared, not harshly, but sincerely, appealing to their humanitarian core. They got enough of the military jargon from the Brotherhood. She needed to prove she was the anchor of their cause, and not the riptide pulling them away from shore and into the deep.

"The Brotherhood have swept away the immediate threat for us, and our orders are to clear out the rest of the camp to use it as our staging base for the war effort. It's not pretty, but this is going to be our new Castle in the desert," she announced on a whim, watching as the swath of concealed faces considered that for a moment. "First, Second, and Third platoons will secure the surface while Fourth will gather the slaves into the large barracks tent,"—she indicated to it with a metal finger, decorated bones and hanging cages marking its location—"then set up a perimeter. Once the surface is clear, we tag all cave locations, flush 'em out with 'nades, and then clear them out one by one. Questions?"

Fowler's bandana gave an updraft to get her attention. "So by 'orders' you mean 'blackmail.' And by 'clearing out and securing' you mean 'cleaning up after the Brotherhood bulldozes through and causes civilian casualties?' Just to be certain, General." His tone was flat and serious, without any hint of egotism.

Despite finding herself respecting his solid stance for his morals, Ilya reined her gaze in on him tautly, clutching at her seed of calmness. She had to take a leaf from Maxson's book and maintain control against their doubt. "Blackmail? Correct me if I'm wrong, Lieutenant, but you're here because you volunteered. I'm not forcing you to stay, and it should be obvious that Elder Maxson would rather have the desert to himself to wage war however he wants." She gestured to the surrounding wreckage. "But this is why we're here. To try and influence the Brotherhood, our _ally_ —" she emphasised, "—on minimising the collateral damage."

"Well you didn't try hard enough." Fowler's stern eyes carried the weight of the accusation, and it stung Ilya more than she let on. The images of slave bodies smeared across her mind.

"Fowler. Show the General some respect, would you?" That mild warning came from Lieutenant Kippenberger, heading Second Platoon. He was an older man hitting at maybe fifty, his straggly white beard peeking out through the headscarf he had wrapped over his chin and up over his militia rawhide hat to keep it secure in the wind. Wrinkles sliced around kind, paling eyes as he sent a slow, sceptical nod her way that said 'don't make me regret standing up for you.' She recalled hearing the Minutemen calling him Kip.

She thanked him with a subtle nod as Fowler held a silence. With a sweeping gaze, she took in their wavering doubt in her agenda. She needed to be upfront with them, without flaring up a revolt against the alliance. "Look, the pre-emptive strike was brutal, I know. It wasn't the Brotherhood's intention to catch civilians in the crossfire, and they do make it a priority to avoid casualties whenever possible. But it's clear our methods are different." She sighed and checked herself from pacing again. "I'm not gonna sugar-coat this. War is messy. Civilians will die no matter what we do. You wouldn't believe the casualty rates in my time before the Great War. It haunts me to this day, some of the things I saw..."

Flares from the past hit her in a vivid kaleidoscope of horror. A gloomy glimpse back to the bodies, the cries, the famines, the wandering lost, that one stray bullet or explosion. That one soul too many.

Losing the sense of herself in the past, Ilya shuddered when a slash of wind whipped sand across her cheek. A strong aching for Danse throbbed and spread throughout her chest, bulging, and her eyes waned into the distant desert, as if her yearning would conjure him to her.

 _How am I supposed to do this without you?_

A rousing cough came from the company of Minutemen, all eyes on her. Ilya collected herself and swallowed a heavy lump in her throat. "The Brotherhood and Minutemen are different. It's that simple. But we both need each other to fight this war, so we need to co-operate." She saw hardened glares and stiff lips, but no one spoke out against her. "I brought you all out here because I believe we can make a difference."

"Make a difference in the Brotherhood?" It was a woman's voice. Lieutenant Gallago, Third Platoon's leader. Her eyes were shielded by a pair of grimy road goggles, but the tipping of her mouth showed her cynicism. "Sorry, General, but I'll believe it when I see it."

"Then you'll believe it when the Brotherhood comes back, because it'll be over my dead body that these people will just be set loose into the desert to fend for themselves. We'll be sending them back to the Castle for treatment and resettling in the Commonwealth, one vertibird at a time if we have to. If Maxson doesn't like it, he can kiss my ass."

A few hesitant chuckles rolled out from the ranks, and Ilya picked out a few invigorated nods, too. It would take time and effort, but she just might be able to win back their trust.

"So let's make a difference." Waiting a beat for any protests, Ilya then shoved her helmet back on and got to work. She split the four platoons into their tasks, and joined First Platoon in sweeping through the camp's eastern complexes. Fowler didn't look pleased with her companionship, but he was thankfully above bitching over it, responding to her orders swiftly and professionally. He seemed to be a reasonable man. Maybe she could make him her second in command, after all, and they could work out their misunderstandings. Maybe...

While they lacked the strict economy of the Brotherhood, the Minutemen flowed from structure to structure smoothly, breaching every hut, tent, and shack without a hitch or leftover raider. Dozens of petrified and traumatised slaves were recovered, found sobbing in surrender on the dirt floors or hiding, squeezing their malnourished bodies into any nook and cranny they could find. It took some reassuring to calm the distress that rained across the camp as more and more slaves were found.

Their conditions saturated Ilya's blood with a torrid, ferocious hatred for their captors, burning hotter than she thought possible. They were worked to the bone, skin clinging desperately to gangly limbs sapped of moisture and meat, scraped raw by the scorching desert sun and blotched by infectious rashes and parasites. Most bore the stamps of abuse and torture, whip slashes tattooing their backs and the mark of the Dark Bloods branding spare patches of skin in the infamous fang and blood-drop design. The more defiant slaves were embellished to the brim in brand scars, no patch of skin left unscathed. Not even their faces and scalps. They were so densely scarred that they looked like Ghouls.

Danse would be appalled by the miasma of inhumanity here.

Ilya found herself climbing out of her armour often to keep from traumatising them further, jumping at the chances she could to personally calm a frantic slave and hold them in her gaze, grip them deeply with the sympathy pouring from her eyes, and console them with the protective burning of her chest.

"You're safe now. We're here to protect you. I'm going to make sure no one hurts you ever again. I promise." She made that promise to each and every one she found until it became a powerful mantra that was sowed into the muscle of her heart.

She stood a vigil, watching with a violently heaving chest of fury as her men aided the slaves toward the main barracks tent, threadbare rags soiled by their own filth. She couldn't even begin to imagine the levels of radiation that swam through their ravaged bodies. Some were even coughing blood as they stumbled into the tent. Those ones may be beyond hope.

Fowler approached the shoulder of her power armour, sharing the focus of her gaze as slaves were escorted to the barracks from all across the camp by tireless Minutemen. He dangled in place a moment before speaking. "I've seen my share of things as a Wastelander. Had to do my share of things to survive, too. But this... this beats it all."

Ilya's memory tugged her back to the haunted deep of the Dunwich quarry, to Doom-Guy and his kingdom hell, and knew that the Dark Bloods could do much worse than this. Yet she said nothing to Fowler.

He pointed sharp eyes at her as she continued to stare at the slaves. "And Maxson was willing to just turn his back on these people, throw them out to the Wastes? What kind of man would do that..."

"He didn't stop long enough to really see the worst of it." She could taste the defensiveness on her tongue, and she shocked herself with it. Why was she defending Maxson? She reminded herself what he did to Danse, and what he was willing to do to every innocent synth in the Commonwealth. Was it really that much of a stretch for him to cast aside these slaves?

Yet, a persistent voice from a suppressed alcove in her mind spoke out against her judgement of him. Was he really so cold as to leave these people for dead?

Danse still believed in him. Did she? Was there still some tiny atom of good in his frozen bones? Or was that little voice defending his humanity just Danse's ghost on her shoulder, pleading her to spare his brother...

Fowler's stare was spiking into her, growing sharper the longer she avoided it. Eventually he snapped. "Unbelievable. You're seriously defending that monster? You didn't mean a word you said back there, did you. You're just his pawn." He scuffed sand with his boot as he turned away. "Danse deserved better than you," the words were spat over his shoulder.

It hit like a cold fist. Solid. Bitter. Shattering through her gut like icicles.

Danse _did_ deserve better than her. All the sins and secrets locked inside her—the chems, the torture, holding onto her love for Nate, the deepening cracks in her sanity, and now leaving him behind in the depths of his struggles... he deserved better.

Feeling a prick of anger at herself begin to mount on her, Ilya smashed her helmet back on and threw herself back into the task at hand. She rallied the Minutemen and received reports from her lieutenants on the overall layout of the camp and the multiple tagged cave entrances that littered its surface. Her, Fowler, Kippenberger, and Gallago knelt over a flat patch of sand and sketched out a rough map, marking each cave sighting with a cross. If there was any remaining raider presence, they would be skulking in those caves. This was where the work got delicate, and deadly.

Ilya hoped they were ready for this. She channelled Danse's very words to her back when she was under his wing, drawing from his empowering mastery of command.

"Stay sharp, and watch each other's backs. Close quarters means no retreat. Remember that."

She could almost hear Danse's deep, smooth voice overlapping her own, and it lent her the steely resolve that his presence always gave to her. The Minutemen nodded with that same steeled resolve before they mobilised.

This time, she accompanied Kippenberger with Second Platoon, keen to keep her distance from Fowler and his frequent glares. The greyed man moved with the tangible experience of decades in the rough wilderness, and carried the command of his platoon with ease. Something about him reminded Ilya of Old Longfellow, back at Far Harbour.

"This here's the largest opening we found," he explained to Ilya as they approached the mouth of the cave, concealed by weedy overgrowth dotted with tiny red flowers. It was the width of three men standing abreast, and the height of a man if he ducked low. She would still be able to wear her power armour past the entrance.

"The others are more or less just fissures and dens," Kippenberger continued while Ilya eyed up the deep hollow, laser rifle clutched firm. "There's no way to tell if they all come together and connect in man-made tunnels, but it's what I'd do if I had the run of the place." He scratched his beard and shrugged out an ounce of guilty suggestion.

Ilya slanted her visor on him, her tone wry. "Tactical catacombs. That your first official pitch for base defence as my lieutenant?"

Again with the guilty shrug. His wrinkled eyes were smiling. "Just thinking out loud, General."

"Call me Harper."

"Well if we're getting cosy, call me Kip."

Ilya liked him already.

Once the other cave entrances in the area were reached and covered by small squads, Kip gave the order to flush them out with fragmentation grenades. A cascade of muffled claps ruptured across the camp and rolled the earth under their feet. Dust and rocky debris was ejected out from the cave that Ilya and Kip had covered, but no yells of warning came before the explosion, or cries of pain afterward. They waited a few beats for the dust to settle, then with exchanged nods, they both swung their rifles in to threaten the empty darkness before proceeding, leading their eight-strong squad inside.

As soon as the mouth of the cave swallowed up the daylight, Ilya's visor adjusted itself to compensate. The Brotherhood hadn't acquired enough pre-war night vision tech for it to be mass produced in their suits as standard-issue, but their helmet visors did have high and low-light detection. She imagined Maxson probably had night-vision equipped in his personalised armour, along with his repertoire of senior officers who were issued higher-grade armaments. She could be bitter about it, but it just came with the territory of a ranked society.

A narrow tunnel dipped into a cool deposit of earth, where a mangled cavern opened out to them, the grenade having torn the contents to shreds. Ilya and Kip spread out, allowing the soldiers in tow to pile out of the tunnel and fill the small space with echoing footfalls. What was left of primitive furnishings and tribal ornaments were speckling colour across the otherwise dark umber of rock. Shards of wood from a makeshift spit, the remnants of the campfire told by blackened kindling and smudges of ash. Broken clay pots and bowls were scattered. Animal hides still in the tanning process lay in tatters. The enormous skull of some unknown tusked beast was fractured on its podium of stacked rocks, its decorative red and black paint leaving clues for a puzzle to mend it. Pouches made from mammal bladders had burst open to spill their powder or liquid contents, along with shattered bottles of Commonwealth alcohol, and a hectic array of vials, syringes, and inhalers, most spent.

"Chems and booze," Kip concluded with a scoff. "Who woulda thought."

Ilya just hummed and plucked her eyes away from them, narrowing them deeper into the cloud of darkness around them. "No bodies..." She strode on a few paces, flicking her helmet light on to chase away the shadows. The mess just expanded, more decor blasted across the space by the grenade, a few shredded bundles of cloth and bedding. "No weapons..."

"Maybe this was where the women and children holed up," one of the younger men spoke out.

"Their women fight too, shit-for-brains," a woman ridiculed.

"Well maybe not all of them."

"Haven't you been paying attention to how these savages live? They rape any woman that doesn't fight!"

"Alright that's enough. Stow it, you two," Kip overrode their bout.

Ilya maintained her helmet light at the back of the cavern, where an oblong fissure widened into another tunnel. "Let's keep moving." She lifted her rifle into firing position and stomped her way through the debris. But when she sidled up to the deeper tunnel, Kip barred her way with a gloved hand, dirty fingernails peeking out the tips.

"Hold up there, filly. We can't have our general getting herself shot up. Best if I go in first, eh?"

Filly? Her eyebrows soared up inside her helmet, and she almost laughed. "You have noticed the giant tin-can I'm in, right?" Her own words brought up fond memories of Hancock's favourite nickname for Danse.

Kip regarded her with mock rebuke, as if she were a sarcastic child. "Even so, those things ain't invincible. And like you said, anything can happen in close quarters."

Now she knew how Maxson felt when Kells battle-blocked him. She suppressed a groan. "Fine. But I'll be right behind you."

Levelling his double barrel shotgun, Kip stepped ahead and took point, clicking on his makeshift torch strapped to the base of his muzzle to illuminate the way. Ilya checked back at the squad behind them, flicking them into her wake with the chin of her helmet. They reformed with hardy expressions and fell in behind her.

The deeper they went, the deeper the caves seemed to grumble around them. It was like the rock was alive, radiation mutating it into a dynamic monster of shifting plates and layers, stretching and yawning all around them. The thought pinched Ilya's chest with a sudden dose of claustrophobia.

 _Like being inside a metal suit of shifting plates and layers isn't bad enough. How the hell does Danse do it?_

"Think we're coming to the end of this thing," Kip broke her thoughts apart after a long while of picking over rocks. He grunted as he made a misstep and kicked up a loose one, the sound skipping off the walls.

"Careful," she warned quietly.

"I may be old, but don't take to calling me 'old man' just yet."

Ilya gave a soft laugh. "Yes, sir."

That pulled out a round of chuckles from him in return, until a coughing fit forced him to subdue himself. Ilya grinned to herself and shook her head.

 _Old man._

It wasn't long after when the old man made a pleased grunt and swept his shotgun abroad at the end of the tunnel. But the pleased grunt was quick to morph into that of sudden pain. He belted out sharply, and before Ilya could pinpoint what had caused his pain, he was swiped off his feet, back cracking down against the rocks where he was dragged into the cave and out of her reach.

"Kip!"

Acting purely on instinct, her rifle picked out the target dragging Kip by his boot. Rays of laser singed through a brute of a man before he could crash his mammoth war club down on Kip's skull. But then he was gone in a grope of shadowy hands.

"BLOOD CHILDREN!"

The warcry of a shrouded army binding into one unified sound assaulted Ilya's eardrums, ricocheting the cave to life. Her eyes blazed wide, horror lodged tightly in her throat, and fear moored her in place. An ambush. The Dark Bloods were waiting for them. They baited them, drew them in like moths to a flame, funnelled them in through this narrow tunnel, and pounced in full force. Ilya felt time itself seize around her as she comprehended the trap her Minutemen had fallen into. The trap _she_ had led them into.

And the Brotherhood weren't here to save them.

* * *

 **A/N:** Title as tribute to Linkin Park's Chester Bennington. R.I.P. I love too many of their songs to pick a fav, so Castle of Glass was the most fitting for the chapter. I haven't liked to mention world events because too many horrible things happen in the world too often, and I figure people come to read for joy and for an escape, but the loss of Chester hit me on a personal level, one because I love Linkin Park, and two because I could empathise with depression and the darker things that come with it. (No I'm not fishing for sympathy, just explaining myself.)

-On a more positive note, I've been listening to Linkin Park on repeat non-stop, and I say that's positive because Chester left behind one hell of a legacy, and that's something to celebrate!


	63. Fire and Fury

**Forewarning:** Graphic violence, horror, and disturbing content involving sexual abuse. This was something I found difficult and that was making me quite squeamish to write, even to the point of nausea, as sexual violence unsettles me more than anything else. But to really capture the horror of this new world and the nature of the enemy, I powered through it. This is also probably the most violent chapter yet, even more than the torture scene with Doom-Guy, which is why I categorized it as horror. I've removed these scenes due to FanFiction's content restrictions, but if you want to read the chapter in its full uncut version, head on over to AO3. FanFic doesn't allow outside links, so just click to my profile where I linked Fury Blood on AO3. It's a pain in the ass, I know.

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 **Fire and Fury**

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A typhoon of bullets bombarded Ilya's power armour, stalling her from reaching Kip as dirty hands reached at him like leeches, pulling him further from view with a helpless cry. The visors over her eyes splintered almost immediately under the fire, breaking her vision into fragments. Sheer pain pushed her back to the tunnel's opening.

"No! Kip!" she called out, desperation cracking it into a shriek. Her chestplate buckled against the unbroken hail of fire, and her laser rifle was pelted out of her grasp as she stretched for a grip of her lieutenant. She heard the sound of it splitting over the racket of bullets and knew it was unsalvageable.

But she couldn't let them take him!

She dragged out her 10mm handgun and popped off rounds blindly, even while her power armour warped inward on her.

"Just go, girl!" she heard through the pandemonium. "Just get the hell out of here!"

He was still alive! They were keeping him alive! But she knew what that meant for him.

"No!" Something heavy collided with her faceplate, hammering her head back and staggering her balance. Her neck jolted down her spinal cord and her brain pounded against the walls of her skull. Another impact at her firing arm nearly freed her pistol, but she retaliated and flung out her elbow, feeling a surge of relief at the feel of it connecting with a body. She continued to fire into the distorted view of darkness and sparking bullets around her, but more melee impacts landed on her plating to join the bullets. They didn't care that they were shredding their own men. They just wanted to destroy her.

"Go! Just Go!" Kip was blasting at her amid the grunts of his struggle. "Get your people out!"

One backward step into the tunnel suddenly solidified her choice. She had to. She had to leave him. Had to get out. Pull her people back. Retreat and regroup. Even against Danse's advice. But the exit wasn't far. They could make it.

Ilya screamed out her defeat, her apology, her promise for vengeance, and pulled back into the cover of the tunnel's walls—leaving Kip to a fate of torture. The Minutemen behind her were slipping off shots around the bulk of her armour, but she barked them into a retreat.

"Fall back! Go go go! Get out of the cave!"

With horror-stricken faces, they gushed back up the tunnel, panicked breaths rasping against rock. Her own panicked breath rasped in her helmet, every fibre of her survival instinct telling her to spin and run behind them, but she wouldn't. Without covering fire, they would be slaughtered in the tunnel.

Taking up a wide stance, Ilya filled up the space of the tunnel with her battered power armour and formed a blockade. She broke out the hindrance of her shattered visor with her finger to clear her vision, shards of glass falling inside her helmet and slicing at her cheeks. The Dark Bloods flooded the tunnel entrance like rapid dogs, shoving at each other for the first bite of her, hounding her with their warcries, reaching and scratching at handholds of rock to pull themselves in against the squish of bodies.

"BLOOD CHILDREN!"

"THE BLOOD HUNT IS COMING!"

"WILL GET YOU!"

"BLOOD HUNT SMELLS YOUR BLOOD!"

"IT'S COMING FOR YOU!"

"CATCH YOU, RIP YOU, TASTE YOU!"

"THE HUNT DRINK YOUR BLOOD!"

"CRAVE YOU!"

"BLOOD HUNT, BLOOD HUNT, BLOOD HUNT!"

All these disturbing, barbaric promises spat wildly from maddened tongues tightened Ilya's skin beneath her suit and rumpled it up with gooseflesh. Their painted faces stretched and twisted at her in unnatural ways, like soulless demons perverted into a horde of nightmares. Fear shook her to the bone.

Forcing herself to hold her ground, Ilya raised her pistol and shot into the horde, suppressing the growing mass of wildmen as they scurried up the tunnel to her. Headshot by headshot, they fell, her focus razor-sharp as it rode the adrenaline pumped off her clapping heartbeat.

It didn't slow them. They hissed and barked at her as their fellow monsters were slayed at their sides, showing their teeth and screaming like banshees. Her lethality only served to drive theirs. She began to back up, step by step, keeping fire on them bullet by bullet.

But then the hollow click of her trigger froze her blood. She was out. Needed to reload.

The instant her fire stalled, the wave of raiders bloomed out at her like thrashing feral ghouls. Her machete was out before she even consciously made the choice. With an arcing swipe, she disembowelled those that reached her in a conjoined charge. Warcries were cut into gargled nonsense. The shadow of spilled blood deepened the darkness of the cave.

More pushed up at her. Risking a look back, she could see the last silhouettes of the Minutemen reaching the end of the tunnel into the first cave, but she couldn't just turn and run. They would pull her from her armour and mangle her to shreds.

She carved out wildly as the horde fell on her, their weapons stabbing between the joints of her plating, jarring the framework beneath and pricking her skin like needles. Refusing to allow them passage, she yelled and thrust into them with her machete, burying it deep into several bodies in a row. But those behind pushed and stabbed at her, their combined strength wilting her armour down.

"General! Grenade!" a man shouted down the end of the tunnel.

The chiming of the grenade bouncing against rock scattered Ilya into survival mode. Digging up one more drop of strength, she braced the weight against her and kicked out with her metal boot, yanking back her machete in the same motion as the crowd of madmen scrambled and fell back from the coming blast.

The grenade rolled between her legs and into the horde as she twisted and dived to the cave floor. The crunch of metal on rock was a mere whimper before the explosion rocked out the tunnel, beating her plates with the shockwave. And then the wet thumps of body parts landing against her back were the result. One even rolled over her head. A dismembered arm.

With ears ringing, a breathy exhale filled her helmet as Ilya pushed up to her feet, the Minutemen ahead urging her to run in muted calls. She stole one look back at the fibrous red gore and the charging raiders beyond, and then pounded dirt and rock for the end of the tunnel.

"Move!" she heaved breathlessly at them. "Don't wait for me! Get out of the cave!"

But right as they turned to obey, a gale of dust and fire blew in the cave entrance, collapsed rock plunging them all into total darkness but for Ilya's headlamp. The fuckers even had a cave-in planned for them.

Ilya didn't stop. She charged across the cave, Minutemen scurrying out of her warpath, the raiders hounding up the tunnel at her back. Dropping her shoulder, she struck rock with a thunderous impact, whiting out her vision with the pain that seemed to split her head like an atom.

Light burst the dark. Her teeth throbbed. The clatter of her Minutemen opening fire to suppress the raiders scrambled the bowels of her brain matter.

Like fuck a pile of rock would stop her.

Backing up, she readied for round two. A savage roar fortified the power of her collision, cracking more rock into shards and dust. More light burst apart the clutches of the dark. A ragged heave fuelled up her lungs for one final push.

"Hurry!" the men and women cried out behind her in clusters, hysteria climbing in them.

Ilya dropped her shoulder and braced to charge.

"Specimens!"

The terror in that single scream pulled Ilya's attention to the tunnel behind them. Against the backdrop of the daylight reaching in through the cave-in, she couldn't get a clear visual, but the streamlined, leaping shapes of spidery legs and snake tails was enough of a visual for her. Hissing sliced the air like the gunfire the Minutemen unleashed. She was out of time.

Ignoring her self-abuse, Ilya pooled everything and powered into the mounds of rock. The impact was brutal. Agony bruised every bone in her as power armour cracked apart like an egg. But rock was cracked, too.

Boulders were blasted free in a deluge of dust. Ilya clung to what was left of the cave-in and pulled herself back to allow the squad passage, plating crumbling from her. "Go!"

Minutemen pulled back one by one, keeping the raiders and specimens suppressed the way they were trained by the Brotherhood. As the last soldier fled through the opening, Ilya unloaded her pistol clip into the advancing horde and fell back to follow them, reaching out for the light of freedom with each stride.

But hands grappled at her armour frame. She bared her teeth and pushed on, trying to shrug them off. And she was. Even reduced to its skeleton, her power armour was too strong for them to hold back.

But then the bleep of the dislodged fusion core at her back sent dread skittering up her spine. _No._ She felt the armour release her from its security, and before the hot air could even brush over her bare uniform, a copse of hands enveloped her from behind.

She was pulled from her armour, a hand around her exposed throat tugging her head out from her helmet, prying fingers wrapping her limbs and tugging at the material of her jumpsuit uniform for a secure hold. A struggling scream broke her lips and she thrashed for freedom, but the more she thrashed, the more they drew her back into the cave.

Raiders and specimens gushed past, and Ilya heard the frantic calls of the Minutemen before the mob of ravenous hands hauled her under the darkness, the light of freedom slipping away beyond her reach. Over her struggles, she heard rips of fabric, then felt sharpened fingernails slice into her bared skin. The hand dragging her by the throat fell away, only for it to reach over at her chest for a rough handful.

"Blood Hunt catch you!"

"Catch you, rip you, taste you!"

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Content censored

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The cave splintered at the mouth in successive blasts, rock spitting wildly in all directions. Debris pelted bodies and the shockwaves pushed air from lungs. Ilya felt the prison of hands fall slack and her body dropped with a mute thud, eardrums recovering, body numb. With dazed eyes, she lay prone and watched as specimens scrambled over raider bodies back down the tunnel, spooked by the explosions. Some of those bodies were rising. Including those beneath her.

"Harper! She's here!"

Minutemen scrambled through the ruins, finishing off raiders before they could rise. Two of them rushed down to her.

"You alright, General?"

"Thank god you survived that!"

Instead of responding, she first responded to the animal inside her and made a quick grab for one of the men's combat knives at his hip.

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Content censored

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Ilya allowed the soldiers to help her through the rubble, but shrugged them off when she reached the fallen wreckage of her power armour. She recovered her machete and 10mm, wielding both in a rigid grasp as she fled to join her squad, ripped, exposed, and ready for battle.

The sense of freedom was dampened by what she saw. The separation of the clouds overhead gave clear light to the carnage reigning over the camp, and Ilya stood atop rubble to take it all in, exhaling through a snarl. A devastating ambush had erupted up from the various caves like rabid volcanoes. The war-painted raiders and gangly specimens swarmed her Minutemen, incited by shaman-like warcriers perched high on boulders or cave openings, bony arms reaching to the red sky.

"BLOOD CHILDREN! FEEL THE BLOOD HUNT! EMBRACE THE DEEP! HUNT AND KILL AND DRINK AND FEED!"

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Content censored

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All of it worked to demoralise the Minutemen in psychological warfare. Those that weren't frozen or stumbling back in fear were writhing with the creatures on their skulls, or were cut down by raiders so drunk on bloodlust and battle fever it was almost beyond the human condition. They were hysteric with the terror they caused, charging in fiendish furors with weapons displayed high for maximum terror-tactics, almost foaming at the mouth with the thrill of the chase.

Minutemen were pulling back to the main barracks, forming a defensive perimeter around the recovered slaves in a heroic effort. But it wasn't enough. They were being slaughtered.

"What do we do?" a man in Ilya's squad breathed, chest puffing with his panic.

 _Nothing,_ her mind answered grimly. _They outplayed us. We're outnumbered. The Brotherhood left us. We're dead. There's nothing we can do._

Her squad turned their eyes onto her silence, searching for guidance, for hope.

A rousing chant rolled out of the cave at their backs.

"BLOOD HUNT, BLOOD HUNT, BLOOD HUNT!"

It awakened that thing in her void, where she kept all the ugly darkness of herself slumbering until she needed it. That thing she wielded with intimate ease. Fury.

"We kill them."

The soldiers gaped at her in unblinking inertia. The chanting grew louder, nearer, thicker.

"We kill them all." Ilya removed her savage gaze from her men and out into the battle, where it called for her. "We fucking kill them all!"

She burst into a sprint as the cave disgorged raiders behind them, feeling her Minutemen raise arms and charge in at her back, loyal or crazy, or without any other choice. She lifted her pistol to free-fire on the move, bagging savages in her path with quick precision while her machete was held back-handed and angled low behind her hip in readiness to slash. Her squad stippled those she missed with automatic fire or shotgun blasts, carving a narrow path through an endless mob to escape the mob pursuing them.

Ilya was fire and fury. The fire was birthed in her core to evoke the fury she wielded, burning and bleeding foes who dared to challenge her passage. She screamed defiance and fury as the poison curing of her ancient blade rendered wildmen wilder with the spread of agony through their veins, each slice of their flesh a curse that she cut short with deadly thrusts and hacks. Her bullets supported her blade, nipping into those at range, and those at point-blank. Blood was flush in the screaming air.

Breaking out the other side of the stampede, Ilya dived recklessly into an open tent and slashed her way through the adjacent wall, tearing out with an opening volley of bullets on the first raiders she saw. Several halted in their stampede to charge her, one armed with a painted pipe rifle, the other two with matching spears.

Dropping to a knee to evade his fire, Ilya landed a clean headshot on the rifleman before addressing the two spears coming at her, the raiders on the ends of them brimming with the lust of skewering her. She rolled from one and sliced off the tip of the other on the exit of her roll, all before her squad caught up in time to bury an overload of lead in them both.

Ilya rose to a stand as more gathered around her, circling and flashing black smiles to taunt. She held them at bay with the threat of her gun, peripherals skimming around for an exit route. They needed to gap before the horde behind them trampled that tent or a swarm of specimens caught their scents. They needed to reach the main barracks.

A brilliant flash of red caught her eye in the circle surrounding them. One of the raiders held a bundle of old-school dynamite, its fuse sparking. The fucking idiot.

Without further thought, Ilya shot it. The powdery blast cleared up an opening in the circle and sent hunks of pulp in a wide radius. "Move!"

They moved, scattering dust and blood as Ilya cleaved and sliced with vicious speed. A cry reached out from behind her and she shot a glance back to catch a glimpse of one from her squad wrestle with an attached specimen, before he dropped to the sand in a convulsion, the spidery-snake nesting its venom. But she didn't stop. She yelled at the others to keep running. They couldn't help him now.

As long as they kept moving they would survive long enough to reach some defensible cover. She hoped...

Coherent thoughts were drowned out by the whorl of bloody melee. Firearms could only hold out so long against a pressing brawl, and every pocket of Minutemen they rushed near were swamped by specimens or gutted by raiders if they proved too lethal. Ilya wreaked vengeance on every raider she witnessed kill her forces, bathing them in bullets and filling them with her blade. Blood streaked her jumpsuit, spilled down her exposed chest, and she tasted it on her mouth, but it was never enough to satiate her fury. Her people were getting slaughtered all around her and her fury was in vain.

Arrows loosed from bows and crossbows speckled their path in pursuit. Spears were launched from higher ground, pounding into sand as Ilya and her men outpaced them. Batches of dynamite, molotovs, and unknown waterskins of crackling purplish gas punctuated the air in their wake.

Until finally, they came within sight of the camp's centre, the main barracks overlooking it on a slight incline. There, Minutemen converged, pinned behind their scant cover of sandbags, thick wooden guard posts, and a trench that rimmed off the small dune into an island.

Slowing her sprint enough to slam her back against a clay hut, Ilya caught her breath and peered around for a better view as her squad spattered themselves against the hut with her, keeping fire outbound. Only four of them remained.

Raiders harassed the defensive lines of the Minutemen, decayed teeth snapping on their shrieks as they stormed forward and flailed under fire. Those with firearms were no less feral. They spat curses as they unleashed relentless streams of fire, howling in glee like wolves and hissing in sadism like the ruthless vampires they were. She awed at the olive sea of specimens among them, scrambling over each other like a hive of ants.

The Minutemen were keeping them in check with well-orchestrated fire, the outgoing emersion of lead and laser never breaking, even between reloads. Danse would be proud.

"We need to get in the trenches," she panted to her squad as they crowed closely for her guidance, eyes flared with fear and focus. "Join up with the others. Safety in numbers." Each of them confirmed without hesitation, trusting in her.

They shouldn't, she thought to herself. She wasn't a wise leader or tactician. She wasn't Danse or Maxson. She was a warrior out for blood, enslaved by impulses that shrouded her clarity of mind. Four of them were already dead or caught by specimens. That was her fault.

Her thoughts reached out to Danse, to him learning of her death out here on the first day. He would blame himself. It would plague him to the end of his days... or end his days with the laser shot he had meant for his skull back down in that bunker.

Her bloody hand flew to her bosom for his holotags, only to be reminded they were gone. Ripped from her by those monsters.

"General, we're being flanked. We gotta move!"

Her mind was spitting thoughts at an unrelenting speed. She could almost hear Danse's reproaches in her mind's ear. _Stay focused, knight. Stay alive._

She may be a paladin now, but she would always be his knight.

"General!"

With a sharp inhale, Ilya reeled her mind back from the void and cast it out into battle, scanning for a route onward. There just wasn't one. It was run or die. "Follow me!"

She powered them through a row of clay huts, Dark Bloods leaping across the thatched roofs overhead and hollering in excitement. Arrows rained after them. Ilya heard the sick puncture of flesh and yelp of another from her squad going down. The hissing of a specimen followed and she knew it was too late to help.

"Run!" she barked out. "Don't stop!"

The trenches were in sight. Just a little more. She pumped her arms and legs harder, breath raking up her airways. Heat roared at her back after the shattering of a molotov. The agonised shrieks of her remaining squad tore a matching shriek up her throat in raging grief.

But the fingers of fire gave her precious cover to reach the trench surrounding the main barracks. She threw herself in without grace, landing hard against a wall of red clay and rolling into the dirt. She growled out with both the pain of impact and of losing her squad. Those men and women had saved her from a fate of rape and torture, but she couldn't save them in return. Despair clung to her like the blood, sweat and clay of battle as Minutemen survivors pulled her to her feet before quickly returning fire on her pursuers.

"General, we thought you were dead!"

"Alive and pissed," she spat dirt and clutched the ache where her shoulder caught the trench wall. "Where's the lieutenant?"

"Out front of the tent," the woman on her left provided, too busy with her shotgun to even spare Ilya a glance.

With a nod, she raced off down the trenches, sand blasting in her eyes and gunfire resonating in her ears.

"Incoming!"

Dynamite shredded overhead and obliterated three men before her eyes, staggering her back against the clay wall. Numb shock washed over her as her mind replayed the sight of them moments before. One second, alive and thinking, the next, dead and nothing. Their bodily debris splashed the clay. An intact hand lay on dirt, a finger twitching.

Her breath echoing louder in her ears against the backdrop of trauma, Ilya pushed on. She passed a man huddled down while the others around him fought on. He banded his knees tight to his chest and hunched in on himself, feet jittering in place, mouth muttering inaudibly, eyes glassy and unfocused.

An eerie slide of cold nausea entered her chest and trickled down to her stomach at the sight of that man. He haunted her waking eyes as she forced her legs to keep moving, through the dying and the dead, until she pushed right into the battle on the front lines, where the trenches curved around the main tent's entranceway.

"Lieutenant Durand!"

Fourth Platoon's leader ceased fire at the call from behind. He tipped up his combat helmet for bleary, bloodshot eyes to centre on her and his clay-caked face sprawled in shock. "General! Fuck me am I glad to see you." But the shock turned to concern as his eyes took in her ripped and bloodied appearance. "You alright, ma'am?"

Suddenly feeling self-conscious of her exposed bra, Ilya tried in vain to wrap herself up, only for the jumpsuit to flare open again without the existence of its zipper and buckle. "Fine," she shrugged it off. _Just got molested, nothing serious._ "You should see the other guy."

Durand didn't seem to appreciate her offhand humour at the present moment. She didn't appreciate it much herself, after replaying it back in her mind. But she didn't have time to process and crumble over her experience. She needed to stay focused. Danse needed her to stay focused.

"The slaves?" she carried the topic over, tapering into stern command as she joined him in low cover against the trench wall, battle roaring around them.

"In the tent. The outer walls are lined with wooden planks and plastered with clay, then fortified with sandbags. They're safe, so long as we hold the line." Ilya peered back at the tent, the slaves wailing their fright within. A nearby crack of dynamite showered them in sand and clumps of dirt. "For however much longer that will be."

Ilya didn't miss the gloom in the lieutenant's voice. The hand she landed on his shoulder was unshakeable. "Hey, we're gonna make it. The Brotherhood will come for us. We just need to hold on."

"You sure the Brotherhood didn't plan this?" His immediate query tugged her brow in confusion, so he added, "Leaving us behind as canon fodder for an ambush?"

The possibility made her blood run cold. She had accused Maxson of using them as canon fodder once before, in the Dunwich quarry. His steadfast denial of her accusation left the answer up in the air, but it was a tactic of his calibre. Cunning and ruthless.

 _Did he leave us here to die?_

The prospect of his betrayal crushed her heart with unexpected force. Not to the Minutemen, he didn't give a damn about them, but to her. Yet, why? Their disdain for each other was open. She should have expected him to betray her. Just like he betrayed Danse... But why was he so protective of her if he'd just been planning to leave her for dead?

Continuous explosions above them jolted Ilya from the scramble of her brain. For Durand's sake, she fixed her gaze back on him and set her expression with conviction. "They won't."

His bleak eyes judged what lay in hers, then he nodded silently. At least one of her lieutenants still believed in her. He was the only one still breathing, for all she knew.

 _Stay focused, knight._

"The other platoons, how many made it back? Fowler and Gallago?"

Durand's nod turned to a shake. "No sign of Fowler. First Platoon was skunked up the ass as soon as the attack hit. Got the worst of the specimens. Gallago almost made it back, but most of her platoon was wiped out when they threw that purple shit on them and then tore through any left standing."

"Fuck," Ilya cursed, feeling the urge to slam her fist into clay.

"Third Platoon?"

"Gone." The stricken look on Durand's face squeezed her chest. "I tried but... there were too many. I'm sorry."

"Kip?"

The squeezing of her chest intensified. "Taken."

A blink, then the lieutenant just nodded with resignation. She wondered if he still believed in her now. He eyed a lone assault rifle and grabbed at it, checking its magazine before offering it out to Ilya. "We hold the line."

She took the rifle, feeling its comforting weight in her arms as she gave one nod. "To the last man." Despite the compact to survive, it felt like the final handshake before an honourable death. Maybe it was.

Together, they bore arms over the trench ridge and gave the Dark Bloods hell, the Minutemen way. Through the numbing of combat, Ilya kept one eye on the crimson sky, right where she had watched Maxson depart.

 _Did you leave me here to die?_

 _..._

 _Stay focused, knight. I need you alive._


	64. Freedom Fighters

**Forewarning:** Graphic violence and disturbing content

* * *

 **Freedom Fighters**

* * *

The stab of a stimpak burst through her neck and enlivened what thrived in her veins. Another one. How many was that now? She lost count.

Back to the battle haze. Ilya's palms were clammy and the pads of her fingers prickled as she became one with her rifle again. It purred violently against her shoulder, spitting out streams of bullets into Dark Blood flesh.

The offering of flesh was mindlessly keen. Still. It just wouldn't stop. The Minutemen were putting up a good fight, but when the stims and bullets ran out, so would they.

The whistle of arrows warned Ilya and surrounding soldiers to take cover, ducking low as the lethal offerings plunged into the trench walls. Guns were up to return fire in unison, only to be met with a complimenting wave of spears. Ilya just managed to shift from one's path, feeling its wind flutter across her shoulder before it plunged instead into a man behind her. She swore and gaped at him, but his eyes were peeled open to stare at her lifelessly, before his mouth unhinged and his head drooped. Gone.

Irrational guilt held her in place for a moment longer, before she shook it off and raised her rifle over the trench to finish her magazine. Lieutenant Durand was still at her side, cranking his laser musket.

"We can't keep this up much longer! Attrition is their game and we can't match it!"

Ilya peppered an incoming tribal before crouching down with him. "Reload!" Minutemen took up her slack in response. She breathed wearily while her numbing fingers worked to exchange clips. _Getting low on ammo._ "Any ideas, Lieutenant?"

Durand tongued his molar grimly and cast glances over the trench tops. "Other than throw weapons at the slaves and force them to fight, or ditch them and make a full retreat, none."

"You forgot surrendering," she proffered in dark mirth. Durand only huffed in equally as dark humour. Dishonour and cowardice were the only ways out, and despite what the Brotherhood and salty Wastelanders said about them, the Minutemen were born and raised in honour and bravery.

She slotted her new clip in place and promised herself three more breaths before going back in. Where the hell was the Brotherhood? The wind should have told them of the renewed battlecries in the camp by now. Or maybe they were drowned out by those the Brotherhood roused themselves. Where was the vertibird left behind to ferry her men down from the Prydwen? Scratch that. Where was the fucking Prydwen!? The blanket of dust in the air was too thick for her eyes to penetrate.

"Come on, Harper." Durand must have noticed the frustration in her eyes as he held his laser musket firm. "Back in it. I've got your back."

She finished her third breath and thinned her lips on a decisive nod, then joined him back over the ridge, the sound and sight of bloody mayhem opening wide for them.

Soldier by soldier, the trench line grew thin as ammunition was spent, forcing combat knives and machetes out from their sheaths. Raiders and specimens began to breach the trenches, leaping on men and women who fought for their lives in desperate efforts. More and more, Ilya found her rifle sights down the trenches instead of over them, picking off raiders as they charged from behind. But it was the specimens she was worried about. If just one broke through from behind, catching the scent of her many wounds over the others around her, she was practically offering her head out on a silver platter.

The threat didn't come from behind. A stray raider broke her defence while she had her focus split, diving at her from above the trench. Durand gave a startled yell before she went down under the raider's weight, back smacking dirt while the masked woman atop her raised a vicious sickle high for the glory kill. A blow from Durand's rifle stock knocked her to the dirt, and Ilya rolled and scrambled upright, drawing her blade as the raider recovered and lunged without pause.

The woman darted side-to-side as she charged, Durand's laser round missing its mark. Ilya focused on the sickle the raider swished out with and blocked her strike, kicking her into the clay wall before stepping in for the kill. But the woman rebounded from the impact almost instantly, ducking low to dodge Ilya's strike and then snapping out a quick punch with knuckledusters that caught Ilya off-guard. Staggering, the impact throbbed sharply as she realised the woman's sickle handle was adorned with the metal knuckles. The raider screamed out a frenzy of nothingness as she tackled Ilya at the waist, slamming her into the opposite wall. A plank of wood dug deep into her back, and the sudden feel of teeth biting into her waist flared with pain, drawing out a raw shout. She saw the woman's arm brace out to stab the sickle into her gut.

Distantly aware of Durand turning his musket on two more raiders coming over the trenches, Ilya gripped her blade in both hands and planted it down into the woman's back, stalling the sickle from gutting her mid-stab. She was released from the raider's teeth and tackle as the body slumped dead.

Durand had shot down one of the incoming raiders, but the other came at him with relentless vengeance in his eyes. Having no time to crank out another shot, the lieutenant ditched his laser musket and swung out his revolver sidearm, only to be disarmed in an instant.

Literally.

The severing of bone elicited a piercing scream as Durand stared down at his arm, sliced off at the elbow and spurting vibrant blood with each pump through his artery. The raider howled a laugh and swiped his machete to behead the screaming lieutenant, but Ilya had already pulled her pistol on him. She shot him once through the temple and watched his body topple, lamenting that she couldn't waste rounds on riddling his body.

"Durand." Rushing to him, she pulled him away from the frontier and deeper down the trench lines, Minutemen fending off raiders all around. "Breathe. You're gonna be fine." She wasn't even sure he could hear her as she pushed him into the curve of the trench around the barracks. He was moaning loudly with stunned eyes fixated on his leaking limb.

Ilya tore at the sleeve of her uniform, the material coming away with ease, having already been shredded. She fastened a rough tourniquet above Durand's elbow before he could protest. Yanked it taut. He screamed anew.

"I know, I'm sorry," she offered in a rush, fingers plucking out a needle of Med-X from a pouch on her hip to prick into his muscle. She followed it with a stimpak and waited for the lieutenant's eyes to come back into focus. They ticked up to her, distorted by blood vessels.

"You with me, Durand?" she checked, gripping his shoulders harshly.

He didn't even flinch as dynamite erupted nearby, shock gripping him harsher than her hands ever could. "Y-yeah. I'm with you. My arm's gone." Stating the obvious seemed more for his own benefit than hers.

She nodded in confirmation. "Yes. Your arm's gone. But it's just an arm. You've got another." She thrust her 10mm handgun into his spare hand, crunching his fingers around the grip and delving her gaze deep into his. "I need you to keep fighting. As long as you can hold out. Can you do that for me?" It was harsh, but so was war. She needed him to keep his head. If he crumbled on her, she wouldn't be able to get him back, and he was as good as dead. All of her other lieutenants could be dead, and she wasn't going to lose her last one.

His nod was slow and disjointed, like he was still comprehending the loss of his arm. Maybe the foundations were already laid for trauma and she was too late to pull him back from it.

A frightened shriek rent the air and drew her attention to the barracks tent. Raiders were making a suicide run for it, their bodies strapped with sticks of dynamite. They would rather kill the slaves than see them saved and free to spill the dark secrets of their captors.

"Protect the slaves!" Ilya lifted her voice in a piercing command, realising she was armed with just her kukri machete and scanned frantically for a firearm. A sawed-off shotgun lay lost near the body of a soldier and she dashed for it.

Not many Minutemen were willing to abandon their self-defence in order to sacrifice themselves above the shelter of the trenches, especially charging against suicide runners. A shotgun blast from one brave Minutewoman felled one suicider from reaching the tent, the shells detonating his dynamite and setting off two others around him, but she was instantly gutted from behind the moment she turned her back on her own attacker.

Ilya made to climb over the trench wall. She knew it was a big ask from men and women who lacked trust and respect in her, and she just hoped she wouldn't be up there alone. If she was going to die here, then she was going to die with honour. "Remember what you're fighting for!" She pulled herself over the wall and charged for the tent, an arrow skimming past her head. There were still no others joining her. "Remember Quincy!"

The mention of the Quincy Massacre hit the collective nerve she aimed for. Minutemen charged to meet the suiciders with her, most armed with only their blades. Many were quickly shot down by arrows and bullets, but just as many survived long enough to reach the suiciders and cut them down from behind or cross blades with them.

Ilya's entire body throbbed to a single rhythm of determination. She reached the lead raider running for the tent and aimed her strike with careful precision through his pelvis from behind, dodging the wrap of dynamite around his torso. He keeled forward in a scream and fell facedown as she withdrew her blade to spin on those coming up from her rear. Arrows flew from all directions, striking down Minutemen and raiders alike, but she narrowed her focus on parrying and dodging incoming strikes long enough for the Minutemen to back her up. Their apathy for their own lives drove her back rapidly, boots dancing over sand. When the load was taken off her by Minutemen, she reached back for her sawed-off and blasted each of the suiciders in the knees, crippling them for the soldiers to finish off.

"The fuses!" Ilya kicked sand over the corpses in an attempt to douse the lit dynamite sticks. Minutemen joined her, stamping out as many fuses as they could, even while arrows were flung haphazardly their way. Several more fell with arrowheads puncturing their chests.

The trenches were too far, too many of them would be shot down by the time they could reach them and dive back for shelter. Ilya snuffed the last fuse she could find and then looked back to the tent. Their presence would draw fire on the slaves, but they were as good as dead if the Minutemen fell anyway.

"Get in the barracks!" she cried, ushering the brave few with her. Their scramble through the open flap was accompanied by arrows and a single spear, which narrowly missed the last soldier inside. The slaves deeper within huddled together in groups against the sandbags lining the spacious tent, gaping at the soldiers with terrified knowing. They knew this was the last stand. The Dark Bloods had pushed their saviours back into their last resort.

Children too old to be indoctrinated as Dark Blood warriors but too useful as slaves to butcher for consumption wept loudly with each other, comforted by shock-ridden women who had taken on mothering roles. Many of the men and several stronger women conspired together on their last stand attack, wielding a variety of weapons stored in the barrack's armoury. They were pale with shock and trembling with fear and famine, but their eyes were wild to defend those that could not defend themselves.

"Thank you," a man among them extended to the soldiers, though all knew the words he needn't speak. _Thank you for trying._

Ilya nodded and watched them through her gulps of air, the sounds of her men and women dying outside pecking in her ears and tormenting her soul. Durand... She had failed them. All of them. The slaves and Minutemen alike. Even if Maxson had predicted an ambush and left the Minutemen to soak up the brunt of it, she was the one who had failed to predict his wicked move. After all their mind games and power plays, he finally got the better of her, finally ended up on top. The Brotherhood had the favour of the Commonwealth by allying with the Minutemen and going to war against the raider uprising. After nuking out this entire desert, they could return home with the tragic story of how the Minutemen and their general fell in battle, honour the fallen in a joint ceremony with the Minutemen at the Castle, and marry their forces with the shared grief and victorious war.

Ad Fucking Victoriam.

And Danse... _Are you still here?_

The charging warcry of raiders answered her instead. A line of them had broken through the barricaded path over the trenches, clutching fiery molotovs destined to set the tent into a raging inferno. At the head was a gargantuan man in full bone armour over metal plating, the eye drawn to the ribcage of some dead beast adorning his torso and chest. Red and black tattoos clawed up his bulging biceps in designs Ilya couldn't identify. His face was concealed within a beastly war mask of a creature she had never seen before, canine in nature but armed with sabre tooth fangs painted in vibrant red dye. On one forearm he wielded a gauntlet incised with two blades travelling its length from elbow to wrist, and clutched in both hands he hefted a giant war axe fit for a super mutant.

"BLOOD HUNT. BLOOD HUNT. BLOOD HUNT."

Ilya's eyes cut to the grenadier corpses just ahead of their path. None of the soldiers with her had firearms. Her sawed-off was only short-range.

Regardless, she took aim through the tent flap. "It's been an honour fighting with you all," she spoke solidly before she pumped off two blasts, none of the pellets making a hit on the sleeping dynamite. She popped the double barrel magazine tube and slotted in four more shells from the small supply strapped to the stock.

"The honour was ours, ma'am," a woman responded heartily, her words aquiver but her jaw firm.

"Truly," another added. The others supplemented him with similar words.

As Ilya took aim again, every soldier around her held their breath in praying anticipation.

The raiders were trampling over the corpses, the beast man at the head of the charge boasting his frightening war axe. Now or never.

A blast. Nothing. The war axe rushed nearer. A held breath. _Are you still with me, Danse?_

The last blast.

Nothing. _Nothing._

A vicious cry was unleashed as the war axe breached through the tent, and it wasn't until Ilya was on her feet and challenging the raider's swing that she realised the cry came from her throat. The axe swing was powerful against her block, knocking her back to the sand without hope of holding it. The shotgun tumbled from her grasp and she exhaled defeatedly as the beast raider heaved back his axe for the finishing stroke.

This was it. Right here. She always knew she would die in battle. She had been waiting for it for so long.

 _I'm coming home, Nate._

Closing her eyes, she savoured her last breath and waited for that elusive calm in the storm where her life would flash before her eyes in a tranquil scintilla. The taste of it would be a bittersweet note on her sapped palette but the aftertaste was what beckoned her so sweetly. She would finally taste the peace of all the pain ending.

 _I love you, Danse._

Her final breath left her. But the shock of the axe snapped her eyes open. There it lay, buried in the sand next to her temple. Her kukri was kicked away, and the hand of the beast raider locked around her throat and hauled her up off the ground, bringing her face so close to the primordial mask of his war helmet she could smell the foul breath beneath. Ilya gazed breathless into that mask and knew it wasn't of death. The raider behind it knew who she was.

He grunted apathetically at her as their warriors collided in battle behind them. Her dwindling air supply robbed her of what stamina she had left, erasing any hope of retaliation as he dragged her back through the tent flap by the throat, past her fighting Minutemen, and out into the clarity of desert light. The clouds were spreading to release the sun in its full glory, taming the sandstorm and reining in the winds. The beast raider treaded heavily into the open, lifted Ilya high with one arm, and presented her out for the battlefield to witness.

"The one the spirits call Whisper, Guardian of Slaves, Angel of Fury, Goddess of Fire, with eyes that witnessed the apocalypse. General of Minutemen. Warrior of Steel. Right hand of Elder Maxson!"

His voice boomed and the battlefield boomed back in ferocious cheers and chants. Ilya fought for each shred of air that she could pull through the locket of his grasp, trying to resist the spread of dark stars filling her vision and the tingle in the fingers she needed to pry his hand looser. The turbulence of chants and rabid cries was turning into a monotonous drum inside her head, like the heavy rotors of a vertibird overhead. Her legs began to paddle for leverage of their own accord, the lack of air sending her body into its own mode of panic.

The beast raider drew her nearer, seeming to admire the way she died slowly in his grip, sniffing in her scent through the nostrils of his mask. "Goddess?" He sucked up more of her scent. "Smell just like woman. Like Elder's prized whore." She gagged on a growl that was blocked by his vice grip. Dark eyes explored her leisurely through the narrow slits in his mask. They were the eyes of a cruel, pitiless creature. Fitting in the mask he wore. "Your blood will tell if it is godly."

The deep rotors in her head were encompassing. The dark stars in her vision were splaying out like viruses, dimming everything but the silent agony of her blood pumping slow and barren through her thirsty veins. Her head lolled back, dark vision seeing the sky as the clouds bruised it red. A shadow passed across the sun and she was sure it was the black hole she was slipping into.

There was a fused shout, shoutings, she couldn't separate them, the bitter noise of gunfire, an eardrum-ripping blast, and then the distant impacts of her body hitting the ground and spilling over. Air was dragged back into her lungs and her vision sharpened painfully, like her retinas were stabbed and pried wide to accept the searing sun. The dynamite. Someone hit the mark.

She saw a vertibird, hovering low in an aggressive swoop for its machinegun turret to pick at the Dark Bloods infesting the trenches. Laser fire struck out from the gunship's troop hold to harass the beast raider as he kneeled over Ilya's limp form, but his armour was more advanced than its primitive appearance suggested. He knelt and shielded his masked head with the armour of his gauntlet, other arm returning blind fire with some type of single-handed auto, maybe a submachine gun. His dark eyes, however, were drilled into Ilya as she gasped and choked on the ripe sting of oxygen.

As the vertibird gushed past and made a sharp swing for a return flight, the beast grabbed at her nearest ankle with the intent of pulling her toward him. She scrabbled back and lashed out with her free leg, the heel of her boot smacking him in the mask. It merely knocked his balance for a fragment of time, and he roughly subdued her by snagging her other ankle and tugging her in so he could reach for her throat again, like a wild animal caught by the scruff.

Ilya was too spent to fight him off and could only struggle in vain as he hauled her in his wake, kicking up spouts of sand in her attempts to catch her feet on something, anything, to gain some leverage and stall him, even for a moment. She caught a glimpse of the barracks tent, the shockwave of the dynamite rending its opening apart. Bodies and the darkness within, that was all she could see. The flames of the molotovs were catching at the flailing material. The slaves would be burned alive!

The vertibird was coming around for another swoop, the soldier in the load gunning his lasers at the beast's back with measured precision, obviously cautious of catching her in the splash radius.

 _The slaves,_ she wanted to scream at whoever he was. _My men. Forget me. Help them!_

With a throaty grunt from the beast raider, Ilya was hauled up and slammed back against the iron bars of a cage, upon some form of wooden wagon. He kept a hand on her throat to keep her wilting without air while another from outside the cage caught her wrists from behind and pulled them above her head, shackling them together. The beast released her throat and moved to secure her ankles together with rope. Raiders crowded around to ward off the terrorising vertibird with bows and arrows, crossbows, spears, and rare firearms. Some of them spat at her and cackled like crazed demons, some reached out to nick her skin with their claw-like nails, lifting the tips to their tongues to taste her blood. A few oozed their fingers down her chest but were quickly slapped away by slaver guards sitting on either side of her cage.

Ilya battled with herself to keep her dignity intact and refuse to show fear. These raiders were bent on defiling her in ways she couldn't imagine. If this was her fate, then she refused to endure it. The first chance she got, she would take her own life. That promise to herself kept her sane enough to prevent tears or screams. It would only satisfy them more.

What her eyes caught amongst the foray did threaten to satisfy the raiders with her outburst, however. It was Durand. His prone body was being carried amongst two raiders, his arm charred at the stump by fire to cauterise the bleeding, and a pulsing specimen on the back of his head. _No._ They were taking him as a slave. Her heart sputtered around as she scanned frantically through the masses. More and more of her Minutemen were being carried off toward the camp's exit. They were enslaving them all. A fate worse than death.

There was a rousing bark from the beast raider ahead of her wagon, and then a following roar that could only belong to an actual beast. As the wagon jolted into motion, Ilya craned back to see what had made that horrendous sound, but one of the slavers was blocking her view.

He noticed her turn his way and grinned a wicked grin, casting a dirty hand out to catch her under the jaw and hold her face up for his view. Ilya grimaced and tried to wrench herself free, but he just laughed and rubbed his calloused thumb over her lips before shoving her face free. She glared as he brought his thumb up to his mouth and tasted it, his grin never straying away. When his hand fell to the crotch of his trousers and patted at the knot keeping it closed in blatant suggestion, Ilya felt bile churn in her gut and turned her face away.

The vertibird tracked the wagon through the camp toward the southern exit, though the anonymous soldier with the laser rifle was reluctant to fire. Confused, she glanced around the wagon for any threats, and she found her answer. Embellishing the wagon were more bundles of dynamite. If any of the Dark Bloods' foes launched a slave rescue effort, they would risk killing the slaves with one misplaced shot. Ruthless calculus. She was aboard a moving quadruple kill.

Just when she thought the shocks were over, a heartfelt drone fell over the camp. She knew that drone. The all-consuming shadow came next, reaching out beneath the Prydwen as it bore in through the plume of storm clouds where they retreated deeper into the desert. It didn't slow in its downward bearing, it maintained pace, diving in like a hungry shark.

The Brotherhood had come back. But for the Minutemen, or just to reclaim their outpost after their canon fodder had died out?

Vertibirds skimmed the flanks of the warship, and Ilya expected her trailing vertibird to pull back and regroup with its squadron, but it didn't. It stayed on her trail.

Was Maxson the anonymous soldier? Who else would go to such lengths to engage in a solo pursuit for her rescue? Even if only to have her live through the humiliation of his success in their power struggle.

The wagon tore past the camp's exit gates, other slave wagons visible in the sandy distance ahead of them. They had been shipping out her Minutemen all throughout the ambush. She didn't want to think about how many had been taken. She couldn't. It was another thing to threaten tears or screams from her.

As she was taken further away from the camp under the Prydwen's shadow, she could only dare to cling to that dangerous thing called hope that whoever was in that vertibird could pull her hide out of this before she had to slit her own throat. Not because she feared her fate. Because she feared wanting what the blade offered over what life offered.


	65. Right Behind You Baby

Forewarning: Graphic violence and sexual themes

* * *

 **Right Behind You Baby**

* * *

It felt like hours that Ilya was shackled up in the cage, eyes riveted on the vertibird as it pursued her tenaciously. Her eyes were plagued by a film of rheumy fatigue, turning the gunship's form into a muddy blur. She searched for the blaze of a red wing on steel shoulders, but there was no sign of Maxson. If it was him up there, he must have lost the cloak in battle or torn it off himself.

The creature hauling the wagon moved at a steady gait, devouring up the sand dunes and rattling the wagon's treads over barren stretches of parched soil. The Bloodlands were more barren wastes of dust than desert sands, but the impression of it left the same dry, scorched, sandy taste in her mouth. Her wrists ached with her efforts to break free of the shackles, the rusted metal digging into her narrow bones and trickling blood down her arms. But the pain helped to keep her sharp against the exhaustion and onset of heatstroke.

The slaver guard with the taunting grin stood with a sigh, creaking his spine and stretching his legs. "Brotherhood want show?" He flung his arms up in a wild gesture of incitement, shouting out to the vertibird shadowing them. "Want show? Yes? I give you show!"

The sound of his fingers pulling at the knot at his crotch sent Ilya's pulse through a surge of bile-curdling dread. He moved around to the opening of the cage and let himself in, still wearing that sick grin. "Let me see how you please Elder Maxson with those tasty lips." As he lowered down to his knees and freed his enlarging organ, he grabbed up a handful of her hair to angle her head where he wanted it. But Ilya had other ideas where she wanted her head. She headbutted his precious organ, squashing it back at an angle that made him yelp. With the spare time, she drew her knees up and bashed out with her tied ankles, shoving him out of the cage. He rolled back into the secured ramp of the wagon, hands cupping his organ protectively.

"Little bitch!" He sprouted back to his feet in a flagrant rage, his member drooping flaccidly before he reached for it again and began to stomp at her, likely with the intent of choking her with it.

Ilya shielded her face with her hanging elbows as a strike of vivid red blazed at his back, setting his ratty shirt up in flame. He screeched and careened forward, but Ilya kicked out again with strength born only of adrenal reserves and sent him toppling back over the wagon's edge. His charred body rolled through dust and fell away.

"Dumb fuck." The other slaver was coming at her from the side of the cage, something sharp between his fingers. She tried to pull away from him, but he reached through the bars and nicked her on the arm with a tiny arrowhead before the vertibird could veer in closer for the soldier to take a clean shot. The raider just sat back amongst the dynamite and glared in a silent dare at the vertibird, knowing he was safe as long as he remained where he was.

Ilya peered at the small cut on her arm, wondering at the clear gel that trickled out with her blood.

"Redshade," the raider explained nonchalantly. "Lethal. Will kill in maybe hour."

She exhaled with ripe panic and flicked back to him.

He gave a crooked grin. "But I have Halcyon." His fingers teased a push-pen injectable at her. Modern, laboratory grade. "If you good, I will cure. Redshade in small dose good for feisty whores that bite." Where did he get his hands on modern medicine like that? She had never heard of Halcyon in the Commonwealth, or even throughout her pre-war military career. And what was Redshade? A native poison?

As soon as the thought slid into her brain, so did the poison's effect. A powerful drowsiness fell into her, or was she falling into _it?_ Her eyelids draped heavily and her head hung forward, elbows knocking against her temples with each shudder of the wagon. She felt submerged in a thick gooey substance, limbs weighed and constrained, but her mind could still comprehend her surroundings. It was reminiscent of the Jet comedown DT's. Not that she had experienced delirium tremens in its full shitstorm due to Cade's detox treatment.

Her only source of hope was the constant thunder of the gunship's rotors and fusion exhaust as she slumbered in the shackles for a time that was lost on her. It could have been minutes, hours, it could have been days or weeks. She was stuck in limbo, just struggling to keep her eyes open to desert sand and ears open to hope.

But were her eyes and ears lying to her? Blood was suddenly sweating from the wagon's floorboards, and the sounds of semi-auto ballistic fire was puncturing the air. Those weren't lasers. Ilya strained to lift her head, her neck too feeble to support the weight. A groan blew onto her lips with the effort, and when she finally heightened her gaze, the vertibird was gone.

 _No. Please don't leave me._

The cage whipped back with enough force to shock her into some vein of restored consciousness. The headache she wasn't aware she had lanced in deeply, matching the angry throbbing around her bound wrists. But the wagon had stopped.

Grunting, Ilya shifted around to catch sight of the beast raider, instead seeing the guard that had poisoned her dead where he sat beside her cage, his head thrust back at an unnatural angle. The Halcyon. Where had he stashed it?

Feeling herself slipping back into that wading limbo, she peered desperately through the fog over her eyes to scan over his pockets. No sign of where it was. She then focused on what had killed him. A large industrial rail spike had been hammered between his eyes, nailing his head, literally, to the wagon's backrest. And she knew of only one person who used the rifle that fired those. And she knew who the spy would be with.

Then the laser fire struck again. She twisted back, straining against her shackles and the poison for her eyes to catch and lock on an eager man jumping down into the sand as the vertibird made a low, skimming pass. He caught his weight in a tight roll and immediately opened fire on the wagon's fore section, lasers abound. Her eyes strove to pick over his every detail. He wore a black synth combat helmet with complete reflective visor, a grey long sleeved t-shirt harbouring the blackened shoulder, elbow, forearm guards, and chestplate of military-grade combat armour serviced by the Brotherhood, complete with dark trousers reinforced by shin and knee guards over combat boots. His gear spoke of prolific preparation and experience; utility pouches, fusion cell packs, weaponry harness, grenade belt, a sheathed combat knife, fingerless grip-gloves, holstered laser sidearm, and that modded laser rifle. But Ilya didn't need to study his apparel and equipment to know who he was.

She knew it was him the moment her eyes caught on him.

* * *

Danse exploded up from the sand and unleashed hell on that wretched excuse of a man that had laid his dirty hands on her. The feeling he had experienced as he watched the raider hang Ilya out by the throat for the raving eyes of those animals was indescribable. It took a great deal of restraint to keep his focus on the giant raider and prevent himself from rushing to free her. A _great_ deal. The sight of her in shackles and bonds almost broke him from that restraint.

The giant raider was returning fire with an automatic firearm, cowering like a despicable animal behind the fortified shielding around the wagon's seating, forming a shed of sorts. It would not be enough to shield his detestable life. Danse's armour soaked up the rounds that caught on him as he moved in for an aggressive confrontation, well aware of his sniper support from the vertibird overhead.

The others had called him crazy for wanting to jump in without a shred of cover while that tusked beast roamed free. He hadn't agreed.

Keeping up suppressive fire, he stormed the raider full-frontal assault, ploughing him up through the chin of his war mask with his rifle's stock. It was satisfying. The impact was dulled by the mask, but it floored the automatic weapon and reeled the man back in his wagon shed enough for Danse to bluster in and smack his barrel firm against his barbaric metal-and-bone chestplate. He pulled the trigger without hesitation and felt the accumulation of heat and force as lasers flared at point-blank, eating into the metal with a fiery glow. Eat it, you son of a bitch.

A howl poured out of the mask as heat singed the raider's chest through the armour, the smell of cooking flesh miring up the small space, but he was as swift as he was gigantic. He batted the rifle aside with the heavy-metal gauntlet on his forearm and thrust out a machete with his other hand. Danse had the insight to flow aside with his rifle, saving his gut from being gored. He braced against the shed wall and straight-kicked the machete at the blade, striking it from the raider's grip. It clattered to the floorboards to join the firearm.

Danse snapped to aim for that heinous war mask this time, finger so damned close to pulling the trigger when the giant threw all his cards on the table, including himself, right into Danse.

They flew out of the wagon and slapped down into sand, roaring at each other in a powerful snag of muscle and limbs, grappling and bashing for dominance. Both sets of hands were tugging at the laser rifle wedged firmly between them. The giant was stronger but Danse had the technique to outwit him, tucking his ankle under his own and shifting his centre of balance enough to flip over him over with a push off the sand.

The rough-and-tumble turned to vicious blows and headbutts into masks and helmet visors. But it seemed the raider had experience with wrestling, as he countered by gathering up a knee between their bodies and catapulting Danse off him in one impressive display. He was flung back into the wagon, back crunching metal and crashing back down into sand on all fours. He heard Ilya give a small cry of pained distress as the wagon lurched under his impact, slamming the cage with it, and it spurred on his combative temper. This raider would die by his hand, honour be damned.

With his laser rifle thrown offside, Danse kneed upright and reached to his hip for his laser scattershot. The muzzle was trained right on the growling man's snout when overhead fire shattered Danse's awareness into an array of vectors. A monstrous shape encroached before he could spin toward the direction of the crossfire from the vertibird, and he only managed to get off one instinctive blast of laser before the shape pounded him down under its inescapable weight.

"Danse!" Ilya shrieked out.

He found himself face-to-face with the living version of the raider's mask. Red sabre-toothed jaws loomed and launched for his throat. But a rail spike punished the beast's thick metal war helmet just in time, multiplied by follow-ups until the creature backed off enough for Danse to paddle back and climb to his feet. Taking in quick breaths, he could finally get a close look at the beast, and he took the advantage to scrutinize it well, biding his time. He could hear Ilya struggling against her bonds, but he kept his focus on his enemy. He needed to know his enemy in thorough detail. Danse always knew his enemy.

Its heavily muscled form reminded him of mutant hounds in the Commonwealth, pets of their super mutant masters, but more streamlined, and yet more monstrous. Powerful shoulders and hindquarters were connected by a lean but sturdy abdomen. It bore metallic armour fashioned into a replica of its internal skeleton, studded with spikes for devastating consequences. Its leathery hide was ashen with the sand, where dark blood was drizzled down its flanks like warpaint. It appeared to have been scarred with tattoos in sharp tribal patterns, striking Danse as depictions of abstract teeth of fire, salivating blood that bled down its fore and hind legs.

As the creature stalked around to bear back toward him, it snapped him its begrudged warning, giving Danse a better view of its horrific muzzle. Its snout bore great tusks sharpened to fine edges and studded around the shafts with metal teeth, courtesy of its raider masters. Upper canine teeth protruded over a snarling mouth like a prehistoric sabre-toothed tiger, annexing the tusks in a menacing maw that drew a sharp breath of preparation from him. The way it locked its red gaze on him through eyes that beheld the ferocity of a wolf but the sharpness of a tiger, Danse could feel himself under chilling analysis. It made the hairs down the back of his neck prickle. Just like when Arthur had him under his chilling analysis.

Those predatory eyes were banded with black paint, like many of the raiders, and dried dark blood oozed from its edges like flaming teardrops. Tattoos of fangs were etched to accompany their real fangs in a double effect. The septum of its snout was pierced with spiked metal rings. Everything about it was metal and madness.

"Deadskull! Kill!" The giant raider stuck his gauntlet fist out at Danse, and the beast obeyed with an opening roar of murderous intent.

Time was fictional and Danse did what his instincts drove him to in a split second, powering head-on at the beast as if he were clad in his power armour, eyes deadlocked on the red pair that bore into him in return.

His laser handcanon spat off a superheated plume to greet Deadskull's launching jaw before Danse dropped his weight in a risky manoeuvre. He nearly yelled aloud with the battle-wrath in his blood as he slid beneath the beast and fired point-blank into its unprotected abdomen. A canopy of scalded blood fell over him as his momentum came to a sharp halt, and he was thankful for his visor as the bloody fallout flecked across his vision.

He was robbed of the opportunity to check his kill as the face of a war axe came crashing at him in the hands of a triggered madman. The vertibird opened the gates of hell in a slew of fire from the turret, battering the raider over and stalling the fall of his axe. Danse breathed out with gratitude and rolled away to get back on his feet.

The turret fire ceased as the vertibird switched targets, meaning Deadskull was still active. Danse laid his trust in his air support and kept eyes on the raider, ducking below a wild axe swing and feinting aside a chaining stab from the bladed gauntlet. He pumped off a one-handed blast into the raider's chest, right on the mark of where he had shoved his rifle barrel earlier, and listened to the resulting screech of agony as the heat skinned his flesh beneath.

He would have tauntingly advised wearing an insulating material beneath the metal to prevent such an agonising experience... but the audible sizzle was such music to Danse's ears that he held his tongue.

As the giant man slouched over to address his pain, Danse took steady aim at his exposed arm above the gauntlet—the only exposure of his armour—and unleashed a scatter of laser. Blood prevailed in a glorious show. The tattoos buried beneath the layers of skin were charred away, revealing a deeper welt of burning bone. The raider yowled and reeled back further. Danse fired a sequel, and the arm came away from the bone to plop in the sand.

Spilling blood became a fountain and the giant raider stumbled through the dense sand, so close to falling, his yowl reaching a new pitch. Danse moved in for the kill, but the pain only spurred on the raider's frenzy and he lashed back around at Danse with his axe. His swinging arc went too wide yet the shaft hit Danse and knocked on the shoulder guard, tumbling him several metres. He grunted into his visor but recovered to roll and dodge the following axe swing which ploughed after him.

Amid his next roll, Danse's eyes tracked the axe and his handcannon disabled it with an offload through the shaft, leaving the wildman with a metal stick. Enraged, he threw it at Danse as he rose back to his feet, where it harmlessly smacked against his combat chestplate. Danse expected to finish the fight with one more shot, but oh, no. The raider was still going.

In the time it took Danse to lift himself to his feet, the raider had found his dismembered arm in the sand and wielded it like a dagger, using the twin blades of the gauntlet to strike out. The dance of swing and dodge ensued as Danse found himself stuck in a state of comprehension. These raiders were infinitely fiendish. Besotted with bloodlust. This giant had to be under some influence other than madness, surely. Or perhaps he had just underestimated their level of pure insanity. What had Ilya been thrown into? What had they done to her?

Finding an opening, he put the raider out of his misery with a well-placed shot into his melted chestplate for the third and final time. The giant raider gave a harsh but withered cry and finally slumped down onto his knees, the plates over his knee joints grinding into the bones that festooned his thigh guards. He wavered there listlessly, beast mask peering skyward, breath filtering out in abrasive groans, then blood dribbled out from under the neck brace that locked it in place like an armoured belt.

Danse felt not a pittance of mercy for the thing. It wasn't a man. And it certainly wasn't worth wasting one more shot on. He holstered his handcannon and approached with unfeeling intent, taking the dismembered arm from the thing's wasted grip. He briefly examined the gauntlet's crude construction and the double blades, thinking it creative but inefficient, then jerked the thing's head back to expose the flesh of the neck, where he lodged the blades in deep.

Death by own arm. Now that was creative, he thought introspectively. When he had concluded earlier that this raider would die by _his_ hand, he wasn't aware he had foreshadowed his fate quite so literally.

Outstanding.

He took some pleasure in the death-gurgle, but mostly he regarded the messy death with a cool detachment. Like he always did when honour ceased to be deserved. It was the only way to stay sane as a Brotherhood soldier. With a shove, the body fell to the land and Danse tossed the murder weapon with it.

He backtracked to retrieve his fallen laser rifle, clutching it in preparation to finish off whatever was left of the tusked beast when he heard Ilya's fraught cries for help.

Panic curled into his stomach and migrated up his chest. He sped back around the wagon to see her cage under siege by monstrous jaws. The beast had been crippled by his attack and the vertibird's fire, but had managed to drag itself to Ilya's cage for an easy meal, gnawing violently on the cage door with it's severely dislocated and burned muzzle. Ilya was struggling just to keep herself out of its striving claw, screaming out his name.

Danse was a blur as he shouldered his rifle and hurtled at a dead run, grabbing up the halved war axe on his way. If he or the vertibird shot the beast, they risked setting off the cluster of dynamite surrounding her cage. Every second he used to close the distance to get to her instead of shooting to kill eroded his mind.

Deadskull turned its broken maw his way just as he quick-stepped into the form that would allow him to deal the most powerful blow his body could muster. He brought the axe down with a primordial cry that had it split right through the creature's skull, rendering it dead on impact. It had officially lived up to its name.

"Danse!"

"Ilya!"

His helmet was torn off and dropped as he rasped her name in kind, the warm wind bathing his sweaty face. It felt as though years had diverged them, but their reunion was a cruel clash of horror. She was breathing heavily and staring at him with shocked intensity, but the fear still in her eyes was graphic and raw. Her limp arms dangled overhead in shackles, and ankles roped together to render her immobile. His heart dropped through his guts at the tarnished and ravaged sight of her, jumpsuit shredded and ripped open, chest exposed and bloody fingerprints were smeared down her cleavage... the implications rattled him to the core. Her skin was sliced with razor-like precision, blood streaked across her entirety, and he doubted all of it was hers. Dark hair curtained her soiled face in wilted, bloody strands, hiding the cuts and bruises that defiled what he cherished. For him, a smile wobbled feebly on her lips, but torment resided in those sapphire eyes that he adored so much.

This was his fault. She was here, in this state, traumatised, suffering, because he failed to reach her in time. Just like Cutler. He crouched to unbolt the cage at once.

Her breathing picked up at the prospect of him reaching her, and he had to compose his own anxious response enough for his fingers to work properly. She said his name again, pleading, needing, unfathoming his existence, her eyes glittering with unshed tears and the sound of her voice on the edge of a broken sob. It all pulled at the thing that thrashed in his chest.

"I'm here now," Danse tried to soothe her as he fumbled with the bolt's lock. Damn it all. It needed a key. He didn't have time for this. "Hold on." Grabbing back for his rifle, he struck at the lock, once, twice, lucky third time, until it warped and broke away.

The cage was open and he was rushing in. Then he had her. He gathered Ilya's face into his gentle hands and found her lips amongst her tears, soothing them with the warm caress of his kiss. She sobbed into his kiss but met it with fierce ardour, prolonging the length he had intended for it as he grew lost with the emotion that had welled up and was now bubbling over. He broke it as he reached up to free her. "You're safe now." It was a struggle to keep his hands steady.

"The poison," Ilya panted, head drooping again despite the reluctance of her gaze to leave his. "The Halcyon. Needle. Need to—find." She could hardly speak. His pulse was a racket in his eardrums.

"Poison? Is the Halcyon the antidote? Where is it? Tell me where it is, Ilya."

She exhaled and groaned, panting as though she was suppressing bile. Danse wasn't aware his forehead could ache from frowning so deeply. The delicate skin of her wrists was marred with small slivers of blood and antagonised bruises, tormenting him with thoughts of how desperately she must have struggled to escape her bonds. He broke open the shackles and caught her as she spilled free, securing her arms over his shoulders. With gentle fingers, he propped her chin up to look into her cloudy eyes.

"Where, Ilya? Just tell me where."

He watched as her pupils expanded and shrivelled repeatedly as she tried to keep him in focus. Eventually, she merged her drained strength and indicated her head to the dead raider beside the cage. "Him."

Danse placed her down as gently as he could and moved out of the cage to the raider. He rifled through the man's leatheredshorts and hanging muscle shirt—moth eaten and sullied with sweat and blood. Nothing. He looked to the modern sneakers that had probably been pillaged from the Commonwealth. Tore them off foul-smelling feet. Tipped them upside-down and shook. Sighed in relief when a slim syringe rattled onto the floorboards.

Placing it between his teeth, Danse bent and pulled himself back into the cage. Ilya was almost unconscious and rolling her head against the bars in an effort to fight the poison.

"Ilya, stay with me." He took the syringe from his teeth and found the prominent artery along her neckline, glancing at the bruise marks from strangulation before he pricked the base of the pen-like device to her skin and clicked what he assumed was the activator at the tip. Ilya's face pinched and her lips parted in miniscule detail. As he went to support her upright, she sagged in his grasp, head falling back and arms boneless. Danse propped her nearest arm over his shoulder, just for the security of giving her something to grasp onto, and guided her face back up to him with a hand at the base of her head, assessing the clarity in her eyes. They were heavy-lidded and still shifting focus.

"Stay with me, soldier."

Black lashes blurred as she uttered a hard blink. Danse nodded his encouragement. Her breathing quickened again as she fought for consciousness, and he felt her limp arm over his shoulder tense up and then lock in at the inner elbow as she began to pull herself upright against him.

"Good girl. That's my knight."

Looping an arm around her waist and the other beneath her knees, he drew her up and carried her out of the cage, conscious of the vertibird landing not far away as he took her clear of the wreckage and placed her down in the soft sand.

"Danse..." His name was spoken from trembling lips. "Are you real?"

"I'm real," he assured softly, fingers stroking hair from her bloodied face so he could stroke at her cheek. He yearned to kiss her lips again, uncaring that they were sapped of moisture and chafed by the sun. They were the most beautiful pair of lips he had ever laid eyes on.

Ilya reached up a whimsical hand to touch his face, testing his realness for herself. She was focusing so intently on his face. "You're here... How?"

He secured his hand over hers and tried not to get lost in the nostalgia of her touch. "I'll explain later. I'm _so_ sorry I couldn't reach you in time. I should have been here to stop this. What have they done to you?" It was more a rhetorical question as he examined her carefully, noticing that the bruising around her throat and those banding her upper arm were older and darker than the fresh ones still angry with swelling. They hadn't been there when she left the bunker, and they wouldn't have developed so quickly during the course of the battle out here... Did the Brotherhood do this to her? The ramifications throbbed inside his head. Frowning, he compartmentalised that for later thought.

"None of this is your fault," she croaked to deny his guilt. "I could have stalled Maxson longer but I didn't, because I was scared of losing you out here. It's too dangerous for you to be so close to the Brotherhood."

He knew that. But he had weighed his choices with their consequences and come to the same conclusion time and time again. He could be angry with her for leaving him behind, but he knew how reckless he was being. He ignored her imploring eyes and continued to check her myriad of wounds after cutting the rope from her ankles.

The thin slices to her body concerned him. What if the tools used to cut her had been laden with more poison or dilatory toxins? In the Brotherhood, he had fought many tribal uprisings, and they were cunning in their craftsmanship of the environment. Maxson II, Arthur's great-great-grandfather, was even killed in battle after being nicked by a poison-tipped arrow, which killed him within a matter of hours. Hopefully this Halcyon substance would subdue any lingering toxins in Ilya's bloodstream.

What concerned Danse more, however, were the bloody fingerprints across her cleavage, and the way her jumpsuit seemed to have been torn open. It was shredded along other areas too, around the hips and thighs, as if someone had been trying to... The way she was staring at him in dismal silence, tracking where his eyes were and following where his thoughts went. He was a Brotherhood soldier, hardened by battle and steel, but yet the reality of damage done to the woman in his arms threatened to undo him.

"Did they..." he couldn't finish his words with the noxious thought of them dishonouring her physically.

The small shake of her head was quick to relieve him. "No. No they didn't. You got to me in time. You got to me in time," she repeated, like it was still sinking in for her. "Thank you," she finished on a strangled chord.

Danse cupped Ilya's battle-marred face with tender ferocity, and when he spoke to her, it was with the magnitude of a binding oath. "I will never let that happen to you. Do you understand me? Never."

Nodding fervently within the cup of his hands, her eyes never left his. "Yes." She was atremble in his arms but clinging to him trustingly, like the way she trusted the submission of her tears to him. They swelled in her haunted sapphires and spilled over in thick droplets. Danse didn't know if they were tears of pain or relief, but he was glad she could entrust them to him.

Overcome with a rolling tangle of emotions, he pulled Ilya to his chest and held her firmly. She trembled against him but her embrace was tight and magnetic. He closed his eyes to cherish the moment, never wanting to let her go, and she showed no sign of weakening her grip on him either.

Footsteps in the sand drew them apart. Deacon's railway rifle hung in Danse's peripheral vision as the spy stood over him and Ilya, respectfully waiting them out. The others gathered behind him. Preston, Hancock, Nick, Cait, MacCready, Dogmeat, and Clay-Crawler. The rest would come in the second transport.

Ilya gazed up at his company and dashed the tears from her face, pushing a smile at them in gratitude. She swallowed hard to regain enough composure to speak.

Nick was the first. "Hey, kid," he said with a measure of sympathy, giving her a gentle smile. "You alright?"

She nodded once and her eyes dipped insecurely before she looked back up to him. "Yeah. Thank you, guys..." Swallow. "...I—"

"You don't gotta say anything more," Hancock cut her off. "We got your back now. This ain't gonna happen again. Not on our watch." He offered the same gentle smile as Nick from his leathery lips.

Danse could sense Ilya's discomfort with letting them see her so emotionally vulnerable, but she handled it well. He understood the feeling. It came with being a leader.

Clay-Crawler was the only one among them whose sympathy couldn't be seen from behind his power armour helmet. Preston released his hold of Dogmeat's combat harness and the canine approached Ilya with timid eagerness. She smiled and reached out a shaky hand to greet him, and he sniffed the blood thoroughly before allowing her fingers to burrow through his mane of fur. She was quick to hug him closer and he licked at her wounds with compassion. The dog was accustomed to the smell of battle and death, especially on Ilya.

"Those fuckers are gonna pay fer what they've done," Cait snarled after a moment of letting Ilya and Dogmeat reunite.

"They took them all."

All eyes fell back to Ilya. Danse studied her quiet rage with an odd sense of dread in his gut.

"The rest are dead." She kept her gaze locked on Dogmeat as he continued to lick away foreign blood. "We were betrayed and I couldn't save them."

"Betrayed?" Danse repeated, that sense of dread expanding in him.

"Maxson did this." When she passed her gaze over to him, he almost shook with the embers of rage that lit her eyes from within. He was held in silence as he processed that.

"What do you mean?" Preston asked from behind, the alarm clear in his voice.

"He left us to defend the outpost while he pushed deeper into the desert, and we were ambushed. He left us for dead."

Preston said nothing. Likely in just as much shock as Danse was. After a moment more of rumination, Danse shook his head.

"You can't know that for sure. Maxson can't afford to sacrifice allies. The Dark Bloods are far more wide spread than we first thought when the Brotherhood started its campaign against them. It was the reason he sought to ally with the Minutemen after you first brought the idea to him." _And Arthur just wouldn't do that... would he?_

"So he could use them as cannon-fodder and spare himself the losses," Ilya pushed back his denial, her anger at his defence of Maxson undisguised. "You weren't here, Danse. You didn't see how cold he was."

 _You weren't here._ The words were like a punch to the gut.

Ilya's regret was sharp and her expression fell. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"It's alright," he told her, though it was an effort to shrug off the guilt that kept climbing over his shoulders. He gathered her back up in his arms and lifted her from the sand, very aware that she was still staring at him in concern. "Whatever the case may be, we need to get you out of this heat and radiation."

"We need to get the Minutemen back."

"We will," he assured as he made his way to the vertibird. Deacon scrunched his hand on Ilya's shoulder before he loped with the others, but it distracted her gaze only for a moment. "But first, we need to regroup with the Brotherhood."

* * *

 **A/N:** Damn did I miss writing Danse! Bringing him back feels like reuniting with an old friend in a weird way. Sorry for the longer-than-usual wait, I made a pact with myself not to have you guys waiting longer than a month for an update and I'm pissed that I nearly broke that, but work has been kicking my ass to the point where insomnia is making a comeback and I'm struggling just to keep weight on, and as you can imagine my energy levels have been too low for my mojo to flow. But those of you who comment and give feedback keep me motivated and help prop me up when life kicks me in the ovaries, so thank you so much!


	66. Deadskull

Forewarning: Graphic violence

* * *

 **Deadskull**

* * *

Battle still brewed beneath the Prydwen's shadow. The itch to be a part of it was deep in his bones.

But Danse kept a vigilant watch over Ilya as their vertibird flew back toward the outpost. He had set her down on the medical cot in the gunship's load, topping her up on Rad-X and flushing her with RadAway, before tending to some of her wounds with the vast supply of meds from the onboard station; he was thankful for the Minutemen's retrofits.

She sat absently, refusing to lie down, and gazed out at the great desert wastes. One of her hands was permanently attached to his arm, possibly for balance as she was still swaying like a reed with each slight tilt of the vertibird. But Danse suspected it was more because she feared being separated from him. It was humbling and heart-wrenching simultaneously.

She was the strongest woman he had ever met in his life, and within less than a day, this place had destroyed her soul... Or maybe her soul never really mended from surviving the apocalypse. Hearing how the Dark Bloods seemed to revere her as an immortal goddess for witnessing it set his skin crawling.

Ilya still had yet to greet her affiliate Child of Atom pilot, whom spoke back from the cramped helm in a raised voice. "We have incoming. Three vertibirds headed right for us."

Danse's head snapped up. The others all gripped their weapons with preparation and exchanged glances. With a reassuring hand on Ilya's arm, he waited for her assenting nod, then he stood and leaned into the cockpit beside Grand Zealot Richter, assessing the situation.

"Alright. This is what we've been preparing for," he declared over the rotors. "We got lucky entering under the fog of combat, but now we're a possible threat to their airspace. They'll be under orders to shoot at the faintest hint of hostility from us. Weapons cold, and no open chatter. I don't want them being antagonised even the slightest. Richter, are you still feeling confident to handle the exchange?"

The religious man turned his steady gaze Danse's way and nodded once. Danse held a wary regard of him ever since meeting him back at the Castle. Having a history in the Enclave—the Brotherhood's nemesis back in the Capital Wasteland—paired with his active role in the Children of Atom—a cult with a religion that worshipped radiation as a god—just rubbed Danse the wrong way. Richter had a calm, eerie manner about him, but his military past was evident in the crisp way he held himself and the hardened eyes of a soldier.

Taking a long, judgemental gawk at the man's intricate tattoo circling his right eye and spreading out to consume the one side of his face, Danse eventually nodded back. With his thick beard and slicked back hair closely shaved up the sides, he vaguely reminded him of a leaner, blonder version of Maxson... Hmm. He then wondered how exactly this man had earned Ilya's trust. Or how she had earned his.

A short-range transmission burst over the helm receiver, and Danse immediately recognised the voice. A fellow paladin by the name of Svensson. "Be advised. You are entering the Brotherhood of Steel's airspace. Identify yourself and your intentions, or be shot down." Blunt. Brotherhood textbook. Svensson was by nature a merciful man, at times to a fault—often the reason he was assigned to human resources or missions that required a deft touch. So his out-of-character tone suggested the situation must be tense and either Kells or Maxson had put the pressure on.

Danse reached for his helmet and dropped it on as Richter made his clearly defined response. "This is Lieutenant Brian Richter, with the Minutemen. We are not a threat. Repeat, we are not a threat. We are en route from the Commonwealth and we have General Ilya Harper onboard. Requesting permission to enter your airspace and offer assistance."

There was a long pause and all hands were tight on their weapons. Clay-Crawler barred the open left flank with his power armour while Hancock manned the turret on the right. Danse heard Ilya issue a soft command for Dogmeat to lie down. As for himself, he stifled the familiar stir of dread that his malfunctions brought forth. Now wasn't the time. Ilya needed his resilience.

"Lieutenant Richter, if Paladin Harper is truly aboard your vessel, then you're going to have to prove that. We'd like to hear her for ourselves, and we'd like a visual of her condition on a flyby. It would also serve as extra security for us to see your other crewmates in order to confirm your status with the Minutemen. Failure to comply will result in your deaths."

The response was to be expected. Revealing themselves for a visual would adequately prove they weren't Dark Bloods holding Ilya for leverage, but were just a crew of misfits and wanna-be heroes. Danse did perform a double-take of Ilya when Svensson addressed her as a paladin, however.

Well, well. It seemed a single day out of the loop was far too long in her fast-paced life. If she could see his face, he would have cocked his trademark brow at her. She had only shrugged at his double-take. Regardless of Maxson's reasoning behind the promotion following his 'execution', Danse felt proud of her. And he would express that next time he had her alone.

He moved to aid her off the medical cot, and she leaned heavily on him as she ambled up to the helm. A string in his heart tweaked at just how weakened she was.

"This is Harper," she spoke in vapid monotone, as if bored by the exchange. "These are my people. Hold your fire."

"What's your status, Paladin?"

Ilya's jaw shifted before she replied in the same monotone. "Alive."

Another pause. "Standby for flyby."

The vertibird trio broke formation into a single file line and swerved in preparation to pass along Richter's starboard. Danse noticed Hancock tracking them on the minigun and tapped him on the shoulder. He received a nonplussed look.

"What did I say about going weapons cold?" he berated as if speaking to an undisciplined child. "Do you really think pointing a minigun at them is a good idea, Hancock?"

The Ghoul lifted his bald brow bone. "And do _you_ really think it's a good idea to let them fly by with our guts hanging open? If your Maxson wanted her dead"—he gestured at Ilya—"we're handing her to him on a flying platter. Not to mention ourselves."

Why did he always have to be so insolent? Danse scowled behind his visor and solidified his tone. "Even if Maxson wanted her dead, which I strongly doubt, he wouldn't risk openly ordering her death. Not only is she his ally and the only reason this alliance is holding together, but she's a renowned member of the Brotherhood. If he were to have her killed, it could incite a revolt against him."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Hancock spluttered back, apparently finding this funny, "but so were you, and that didn't mean fuck all to 'em."

Insolent, and without a shred of honour. Why did he always go for that raw nerve? Danse was ready to back the Ghoul against the wall, but at the feel of Ilya's soothing touch at his bicep where the Ghoul couldn't see her influence, Danse let his fumes evaporate. He took a simmering breath. " _I'm_ not human."

Hancock weighed his reaction with shrewd eyes, then hinted at a grin. "Join the club, tin-can. Us outsiders of the world don't give a damn. Here's hoping one day you'll realise your fabled Brotherhood ain't so brotherly."

MacCready checked his throat loudly to draw attention where he leaned a hip on the back wall. "When you guys are done, there's still a bunch of flying guns headed for us. Just thought I'd remind you."

By the time they had themselves sorted to present their level of cooperation on a flyby, Ilya stood to show herself as proof of being at free will, albeit with a dark scowl. Danse stood at her back, ready to assist if her legs gave out or to thrust her around behind him if the Brotherhood opened fire on her—which, contrary to Hancock's opinion, he didn't think probable. Hancock settled for leaning on the minigun and boasting a suggestive grin. Preston stood tall and proud in his Minutemen colonial duster and rawhide hat, Nick concealed himself behind Clay-Crawler's questionable raider-style power armour, and Dogmeat rested on his stomach, peeking out between pairs of legs.

Further down the line, however, Cait sent off a wink to the vertibirds, MacCready waved tauntingly, and Deacon... blew a kiss and twiddled his fingers at them. Danse face-palmed his visor.

Hell, at least it was better than the Brotherhood passing by to see them all strangling each other to death.

Their response took longer than Danse would have liked. "Visual identification confirmed, Lieutenant. On behalf of the Brotherhood of Steel, we'd like to thank you for recovering and returning one of our own. I'm Paladin Svensson, and I will personally see to it that you and your... crew, are aptly compensated for your efforts."

Richter slanted a look of astonishment back at Ilya and Danse before responding. "Acknowledged, Paladin Svensson. But Harper is also one of ours, so there will be no need for a reward. Though we appreciate the offer."

"What? Aw come on!" MacCready whined under his breath. Typical merc.

Danse approved of Richter's diplomatic graciousness, though he refused to be fooled into thinking it was anything beyond that.

"We insist, Lieutenant," was Svensson's flat answer. "You did the Brotherhood a service, and we pay our debts. Besides, I know how you Wastelanders work. No need for the graciousness."

"I got dibs on the guns," MacCready was quick to slip in.

"No fair!" Deacon protested in the background.

"But permission to assist in ground based combat is denied. You will be escorted back to base and instructed to set down at the secured landing site. You'll hand Paladin Harper over to us, where she'll be taken by armed escort directly to Elder Maxson's prefab quarters, on his request if we were to recover her."

Danse had to stifle himself from interjecting. She needed medical attention, not an interrogation. By the look of Richter, he interpreted Danse's sharpened body language and was about to relay similar thoughts to Svensson, but Ilya spoke for herself in a scathing, unearthly tone Danse had never heard from her before.

"As the elder commands. Harper out."

* * *

The Brotherhood had mopped up the thickest of the enemy forces by the time the vertibirds rendezvoused alongside the Prydwen, but resistance was still well dug in.

Primitive weapons flung up in vain into the all-consuming shadow of the Prydwen. Lasers bit down at the raiders from the warship's flight deck, and machinegun fire tore down in accompaniment as vertibirds soared along her flanks. Her altitude was low, dangerously low, but she hovered with the steady presence of a preying beast.

Danse couldn't imagine Captain Kells ordering his helmsmen to take the warship in low enough for ground forces to shred up her thrusters and expose the volatile fuel lines to hostile fire. Would Maxson have overruled him? He had always been a bold leader, a warrior's heart over a diplomat's mind, but with a general balance of both. Danse found it hard to believe that the elder would risk the Prydwen's condition for forces that he had condemned to slaughter. Even if the hearty show of a full-scale rescue was just a guise to save face.

Danse refused to believe that Arthur had left them for dead.

He leaned into the starboard hatch against the g-force of Richter's banking turn, getting a solid visual of the ground assault. The memory of the first time he had taken Ilya up by vertibird to see the Prydwen leaked into his mind unbidden.

" _It never ceases to amaze me how drastically your perception of the battlefield changes from the air,"_ he had said to her during the flight. Those same words rang true here and now. On their initial approach during the massacre of the Minutemen, he had skimmed the death and destruction and held the mental association with the sight at bay, eyes hunting only for her.

But now that she was safe, it was difficult to hold back all the other emotional noise at seeing the scores of dead Minutemen blemishing the field of sand. Good men and women. Men and women he had trained and fought with. Men and women he would be proud to die with. And they weren't even his to mourn.

His head angled slightly to glimpse Ilya's profile. The sight was destructive to her soul, he could tell. She was mired in grief, but black and livid in the eyes. Maxson better have answers. For his own sake.

Detecting the pin and lock of Ilya's gaze, Danse followed it back down into the combat below. The red cloak hanging in shredded folds from the back of power armour was hard to miss. A luring trap for greedy enemies to throw themselves at. A lesser warrior wouldn't dare be so bold as to draw attention to himself. Only one with utmost confidence in himself and in those at his back would take such a stand for glory. It was to be expected of a fighting Elder of Steel.

Maxson stood with his soldiers in a wall of steel, beating back the festering waves of Dark Bloods that were spitting out from caves. It had been a long time since Danse had fought at Maxson's side. The urge to stand at his side in glorious battle slammed through him like a war axe, but the Brotherhood had denied their assistance.

He cast his eyes over to the incoming landing site, a makeshift vertibird pad hemmed by troopers. It was a fair distance from the battle zone, where an entire section of the camp had been cleared and secured. Already, the Brotherhood were installing prefabricated field structures and bivouacs.

Again, his eyes shifted back to the battle, watching restlessly as a cloud of black chemical gas vomited over Maxson's position. It sparked as if lit by micro firecrackers and the soldiers fled its radius. Several fell to their knees and began to convulse violently in their helmets. _Ventilation seals_ , Danse willed them in his mind. _Seal your ventilation systems, damn it._

Arthur was pulling one of his men out of the gas, firing his rifle with one hand. One of the micro chemical reactions in the gas popped near his head and he pitched sideways from the force, dropping the soldier he dragged.

Panic forked into his brain and Danse could see the air supply to Arthur's helmet venting out, but he righted himself, reclaimed his hold of what appeared to be a dead soldier by now, and hurried out from the gas. Black matter clung to his armour and shed off like powder.

Danse felt a clammy hand at his wrist and was drawn back to Ilya, her blue eyes pouring over his visor. He was suddenly aware of the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

"I have to," he answered her silent plea.

A nervous light entered her eyes and she shook her head. "No you don't. You don't owe him anything."

He could see that she meant for Arthur to be killed. Meant for him to _let_ him be killed. It had finally gotten to that point of rivalry between the two of them. Though even if he didn't assist, Danse doubted Arthur would be killed so easily with the vertibird air support and his troopers regrouping to his position as the gas cleared, but duty hummed through his bones.

Torn, Danse looked back down on the battlefield, watching as his former brothers and sisters succumbed to the dark magic of that gas, convulsions stilling into limp armour. It ate at his moral fibre not to come to their aid. Arthur had pulled his soldier to safety behind a clutch of rocky outcrops and gripped his rifle with both hands to return fire on assailants, risking the release of a plasma grenade to keep specimens at length. He envisioned him as a boy again, bright blue-eyed and innocent. Imaginative. Eager. Sad.

His eyes went back to Ilya. "I have to," he repeated.

Her desperate gaze held firm for so long he thought she was catatonic with dread. But then her grimy face smoothed over and she just nodded.

At that, Danse was instantly kicked in the chest by his operational head-space. "Richter, break off from the Brotherhood escort." Tuning out the sound of the vertibird pilots coming in on the comms with their queries, his head then snapped to his fireteam as he issued the game plan. "If you wish to assist, this is how we're playing it. I'll have to remain mute to keep from revealing myself to the Brotherhood, so Preston is my second-in-command and will act as the fireteam director, as we've previously discussed."

Preston took on a posture of responsibility, and Danse prayed it was genuine. With a course of regular stimpaks, his bullet wound to the chest was on the mend and shouldn't impede his performance.

"Clay-Crawler," Danse addressed next, "you have the power armour so that means you're on point on touchdown. Draw enough attention so we can deploy behind you and make a break for cover."

"Yes!" the raider acknowledged snappily. "Much thanks!"

"Don't thank me yet. MacCready, you're on ranged support, which means you'll be staying behind to protect Ilya, Deacon. I know you'll take her safety seriously." _Unlike anything else..._

The spy sighed but nodded his acceptance. "Gonna hurt to miss out on the fun, but someone's gotta watch over this one in case she dives head-first into trouble. Which is _so_ rare."

Ilya only folded her arms and kept a stale expression. She was wise not to protest him giving her a guard detail. Obviously she knew it would be futile.

"The rest of you know your roles," Danse finished with a decisive, sweeping gaze. They all appeared ready for combat. None uttered a word of refusal.

"There's no need to keep one of your team behind." Collective eyes shot up to Richter as he brought the vertibird around. "I will guard Ilya. I owe her a debt, and she is a sister of the Children of Atom." He glanced back from the helm just long enough to connect a gaze with Danse.

Danse let that settle in for internal scrutiny for a moment. He didn't trust the man, but Ilya did, and her confirming nod swayed him. "Can I trust you to guard her with your life?"

"I swear it in Atom's name. You have my word."

Danse wished he could be free of his helmet so that he could spear the man with his threat if he failed his charge. "Good. Because there will be hell to pay if anything happens to her under your watch." He caught Ilya suppress the flicker of a smile before her eyes rested back on him, mouth a grim, pale line again. They clasped each other's forearms in unison, as if their minds had collaborated on the bonding gesture. It was a firm clasp.

"No heroics. Just come back to me. Please." Her voice was thin and strained, but her hand gripping his arm pulled taut with emphasis.

He returned the strength and forced her a tiny step nearer. "Always." She oozed into his pull with yearning and he could sense her need for his security. By steel he wanted to crush her against his lips and tell her that everything would be alright now that he was here with her, but such a display of affection before the others just sat wrong with him; Brotherhood decorum was lodged deep. Still, his unchecked shower of affection on her during her rescue would have left nothing to the imagination of their relationship. He had been a fool in his emotional behaviour, but he wouldn't take any of it back.

As far as he was concerned, if the crew disapproved of their relationship, they could promptly shove it.

The calls of the Brotherhood vertibirds over the comms persisted into threats. "Minutemen vertibird, if you do not respond and comply, we will be forced to take action by force. State your intentions or we will open fire on one of your engines and force you down. Over!"

"They're bluffing, they wouldn't open fire knowing Ilya's onboard. Put them out of their misery, Lieutenant. Then set us down and get clear of the hostile zone," Danse ordered as he released Ilya to guide her back into the helm beside Richter. She swapped her grasp on him for the pilot seat's backrest.

"Understood," Richter responded before keying back into the comm unit. "This is Lieutenant Richter. Apologies but it seemed the radio waves were interrupted for a moment there. Moving in to drop off troops to assist in combat. Will move back into formation thereafter."

"Negative, Lieutenant. You are not permitted to enter the combat airspace. Pull out immediately or face the consequences!"

"Ignore them," Danse said briskly.

Ignoring them, Richter kept a steady approach into the outpost for Hancock to open fire on the minigun, forcing open a clearing for them to settle down behind the cover of a burning longhouse hut.

Deacon prepped his ungainly 'railway rifle' before swapping out for his silenced pistol, no doubt better suited for the initial rush before he could settle into long-range cover. "Alright ladies, grab your tits! Let's hustle!" He swiped a glance at Ilya. "You, have a long sit-down and a nuka cola, we'll be back to join you in no time." She arched a brow at him. He then swiped his gaze over to Clay-Crawler. "Clay, kill!"

The raider did as he was told and bounded out first, combat shotgun in hand. "Much thanks!" he shouted back.

"Uh, you're welcome..?"

After pulling on their gas masks, which were intended for the sandstorms, the crew then poured out as one machine, immediately punching a hole through a wave of tribal raiders seeking to flank the Brotherhood's rear. Satisfied with their procedure, Danse only had one last thing to do.

"Dogmeat. Stay with Ilya, boy. Keep her safe."

The canine barked back and then whined in disappointment, settling his head down on his paws at Ilya's feet. Danse then drank in his bolstering fill of Ilya's eyes before wrenching himself away and into the dust and roar of battle.

It hit him like the familiar fist of an old friend. The first assault on his senses was the static mix of fear and madness on the air, two states that came hand-in-hand at mankind's lowest point of kill-or-be-killed. Then the musk of death. Ripe blood in the air and roasted flesh—all too familiar. Both were soul-damaging but oddly comforting. Like a toxic relationship.

He had to get to Arthur. Danse kept eyes on his squad as they advanced toward the Brotherhood's position. Clay-Crawler was making a mess in his power armour, bashing his merry way through raiders like an enraged rhinoceros. His shotgun devoured their ranks and shredded tribals to pieces, which he used to throw at others who were out of range of his muzzle. His gleeful laughter rose in pitch each time. He was terrifying, Danse decided.

 _Note to oneself: never give the raider access to a fat-man launcher._

Preston urged the squad forward behind Clay-Crawler's wrath, picking out cover as they went. Danse fell into Preston's tempo of command, though it felt a little unnatural at first; he would have preferred if the Minuteman officer had kept them in a tighter formation. He brought up his laser rifle and squeezed off a few shots into a pack of unsuspecting raiders. Those that flitted to cover were quickly dispatched by a fusion of Nick's and Deacon's handgun fire, sleek headshots marking them. Those that charged in were Hancock's and Cait's shotgun domain, while MacCready took up the rear with Danse, taking good care of any particular threats before they could become a disturbance for the team.

They flowed well together, but Danse was well-aware that few of them had ever been in a firefight of this scale before. Even well-trained soldiers and gelled teams could tumble under the weight of total anarchy.

"Yeah, so this is happening!" he thought he heard Deacon yell out above the warfare.

He cast a quick glance at the spy's position, observing as he fired off those massive rail spikes from his rifle. They devastated the raiders they struck, the force of them so strong that they tore heads off and pinned them back against boulders like grotesque decorations. Deacon didn't seem to think much of it, he was already lining up more shots. Danse decided he would cope just fine with the anarchy.

"Hey, Deacon!" MacCready called out from Danse's side. "I'm on five headshots!"

Deacon pressed back into cover and reloaded, Cait keeping him covered. "Oh game on, my friend! I'm at seven nailed heads! Better pick up the pace!"

MacCready let out the equivalent of a scoff in his gas mask. "Whatever, man! You're a serial liar! I bet you're only on two!"

"We can count the nailed heads when this is over, if you can stomach it!"

"Only if you can stomach being a loser!"

"I'll stomach the both of ya with a shiv if yer don't shut the hell up!" Cait snapped at last.

MacCready chuckled beside Danse, and the merc was fortunate that Danse had to keep this helmet on and stay mute. Clearly these two troublemakers were going to enable each other to no end.

What remained of the black gas was now just a sooty shadow across the sand, laying claim to the bodies it had stolen the lives from. Danse felt grief for the loss of his brothers and sisters under it, but gunfire on his rocky cover reminded him he couldn't think of them right now. They needed to push through and make sure Arthur didn't join them.

The Brotherhood had pushed the raider forces back into the largest cave opening, trapping them and whittling them down one at a time. But the release of the gas had scattered the Brotherhood enough for the raiders to gain ground and pour out in snippets of lucky chargers. Specimens were few and far between, but those that did manage to break through the rubble of the cave mouth leaped straight for the soldiers. They were dropping intermittently, the creatures wedging under their helmet seals and paralysing them, but with each felled soldier Danse grew more restless.

He kept his sights on Arthur, seeing him tear his damaged helmet off with bared teeth, clearly finding it a hindrance. The proximity of some of the specimens alarmed Danse, but the elder quashed their attempts at reaching him with dexterous strikes from his combat blade. His troops were back at his side, but it didn't settle the unease in Danse's gut each time a specimen leapt at him or an arrow whistled by.

Preston brought them to a halt on the cusp of the Brotherhood's position. "Form up, team," he called. Everyone converged behind boulders to get within earshot. Danse barked off a few more shots before swinging back into cover and hunkering down, curiously awaiting to hear how Preston would play this.

The young man was a little out of breath and took a second to catch it—no doubt his recent bullet wound being the culprit of his lost fitness. "Okay. I think we should hold a defensive line here and cover the Brotherhood's back. Cait, Hancock, you guys have our flanks. Nick, keep us covered at the rear, make some noise if any of those things try to make a run for us."

The synth acquiesced in a smirk—he had no need for a gas mask. "Makes sense. Get the robot to stick his neck out for you fleshy things." His tone dripped in sarcasm, but Danse thought he detected a hint of chagrin.

"Sorry, Nick," Preston offered guiltily. "You know I don't mean it like that. I'm just hoping the specimens might avoid you because you're a synth."

"Hmm. Fair enough," Nick shrugged.

Danse suddenly felt as if an elephant was sitting on his shoulders, but no one brought up the possibility of the specimens avoiding him, too. Unlike Nick's early prototype design, he was flesh and blood. But was his flesh and blood real enough to fool parasites? The following silence suggested they were all thinking it. Which meant they were being sensitive with him. He didn't like it.

"The rest of us are on fire support," Preston finished. "So... what do you think?"

It took Danse a moment to realise the question was aimed his way, which in turn, made him realise he needed some sort of codename for the others to address him by.

He gave Preston the thumbs up.

Getting the stamp of approval, Preston cranked up his laser musket. "Alright team, let's do this!"

Their co-ordinated fire joined that of the overhead vertibirds in supporting the Brotherhood's position, pouring on a mesh of destruction at the cave's opening. The rubble was reduced to rock-dust and pasted red with blood. Garbled cries were drowned out by the sheer downpour.

Danse kept Maxson covered from afar, making sure no raider or specimen escaped the onslaught to gain on him. When Maxson gave the order to advance and push the raiders deeper into the cave, the Brotherhood complied with overwhelming force. All units came out from their cover and went on the offensive, steadily marching forth.

That was when a single arrow from outside the killzone was cast for the elder. Danse watched the impact unfold as if in slow-motion. There was a streak of the red fletching, a wide flaying of blood off the scalp, and Arthur flinched down with a cry of sudden pain. There was a flurry of shouting and his soldiers reacted in microseconds.

"The elder's hit!"

"Maxson's been hit!"

"Protect Elder Maxson!"

They fanned around him protectively, scanning for the stray archer, but Danse knew the outside patrols would be hunting him down relentlessly. He was probably already dead.

With a chill vein in his chest, he strained to see the extent of the damage done to Arthur through the gridlock defence of his soldiers. It was like Maxson II all over again. Would he share the same tragic fate? Death by the poison kiss of an arrow. Such an end would be a poetic insult, and Danse couldn't allow it. Not like this. Not under his watch.

Before he could stop himself, he was bounding over his cover and taking a measured advance toward the elder, keeping his barrel aimed outward in defence and exposing his back to the soldiers to show them he wasn't a threat. Their visors eyed him briefly but then ignored him, refocusing their assault on the cave. He took the opportunity to guard Maxson's six, catching only a glimpse of the man as he rose back to his feet and resumed combat. Blood slashed his scalp like a hot brand.

A renewed flood of specimens broke over the rubble at the cave mouth, smelling the fresh lure of blood and converging toward the elder like moths to a flame. The situation had escalated too far and Maxson's men were urging him to fall back from the battlefield.

But he refused.

Driven by honour or pride or anger, Danse wasn't sure, but he was determined not to stand by while Arthur Maxson was endangered. Danse edged up to the elder's flank and warded off the specimens that filtered through the slowed movements of power armour. He served as a vital instrument of speed where it lacked, and he felt certain that without his help, Arthur would have fallen prey to one of the wretched things.

Amidst the fight, one moment pierced deep where both he and Arthur spun at the same time, almost clashing rifles. The motion was too bleary for their eyes to settle on one another, but Danse did catch the glint of suspicion in Arthur's eyes. He shook it off and maintained focus.

Foes were soon reduced to drabbles, and the vertibirds broke off to circle the span of the outpost. The Brotherhood regrouped into a small strike team and moved in to clear out the cave, while those that remained outside kept the opening under guard. The quiet that settled in thereafter was chilling, bringing the extreme volume of death in the opening of the war to full reality.

Danse reluctantly dropped his combat stance and searched out his squad, spotting them where he'd left them behind the cover of boulders. He had no doubt that their fire support had saved his life multiple times just then.

"Sir!" A soldier appeared from the direction of the centre of camp with heavy strides, holding a blade in his fist. He handed it to the elder. "We found this in the tent with the slaves, sir. They say she was dragged outside the tent, but they lost sight of her when the fires spread." The elder gazed down, and his metal fist slowly closed on the grip. It was Ilya's mysterious kukri blade from the quarry, varnished with blood.

"Find her!" Maxson cracked the air with his sudden shout, dredging his voice up from deep in his chest to be heard all across the camp. Under a helm of wet blood that still dribbled down his neck, his eyes were vivid as they spanned the soldiers awaiting his command. "No one rests until she is found. Dead or alive!" He was incensed. Panting with it. Would he be so angered by the ambush and Ilya's fate if he had meant for it to occur? Danse mulled while the camp turned into a factory of activity to locate the lost Minutemen leader.

"You," Arthur breathed, and Danse turned in alarm to see the elder facing him, wearing a full metal jacket of ire. "I would know your name, stranger."

It was a demand, and Danse felt his throat lock up with the sudden trip of his heartbeat. He stood to face the formidable elder, but couldn't conjure up a single thought of escape.

 _You fool, Danse. Come to his aid in battle, and expect him to let you walk without collecting your name for the debt owed. This was the exact moment that Ilya warned you of, and she knows you better than you know yourself._

"He's one of mine."

The confident sound of Ilya's voice saved him before he could speak and doom himself. Both men turned and observed in stunned silence as she stepped out from between the towering power armour soldiers and approached. She had thrown a leather duster over her black uniform to blunt the horror of her state, but only a blind mule would fail to notice how depleted she was. Her loose hair blew across her face in blood-bound strands, but her face beneath the veil was rigid and smoking with that same quiet fire. Her eyes, they were a weapon, needling into Arthur.

"She was recovered by her people outside the camp, Elder." Oskar Svensson appeared behind her in his suit, helmet off. Danse knew the paladin on a first name basis, but their relationship went no deeper than that. There was no sign of Richter. "They came by vertibird from the Commonwealth. This man was among them."

"He has no real name," Ilya spoke tightly, chin lifted. "Just the one he earned in battle. Deadskull."

After the beast he slayed, Danse recognised. Hmm. Good enough. And oddly fitting, if he thought about it in depth.

Arthur's gaze was still primed on Ilya, deftly scrutinising her condition, but when it angled back over to Danse it was as if his gaze was centred by some centrifugal force, giving the slow slide of his head an eerie craft. Danse tried not to bristle, but cruel memories abounded. The last time he had seen Arthur's gaze carry such menace, he was being sentenced to death under a hateful tirade. And here they were again, the three of them facing off in a precarious brew of wills. Anger suddenly overrode his brotherly notion of the younger man.

"Can you not speak for yourself, stranger?" Maxson provoked.

"He doesn't speak. Nor does he show his face."

Maxson waited tacitly for an explanation, still sizing Danse up.

"Raiders cut off his tongue and burned off his face. He's bound to me by oath of loyalty, but he's of free will."

"So he serves as your personal bodyguard," the elder discerned in a dry tone. It was clear that he disapproved of placing her safety in the hands of a Wastelander. And one that might get in the way of their collaborations, and in particular, his plans for her.

"Yes." Her response left no room for misinterpretation.

Danse's pulse muttered in the shell of his helmet as Maxson eyed him a good moment longer, then Ilya, his shade of suspicion refusing to wane. She gave off hostile vibrations as she simply met his gaze, the angles of her body seeming sharp and challenging despite her feeble state. Danse observed as Arthur's eyes then quick-silvered her where the duster parted over her chest. The torn neckline of her jumpsuit was evident, and the scratches and bloody fingerprints just peeked out for view. Danse might have seen a mote of concern in the elder's expression, but he might just as easily have imagined it.

"You're injured," Maxson stated. "Let Paladin Svensson here take you up to the Prydwen to medical. I'll be along shortly, then we can discuss exactly what happened here."

"No. We discuss this now," she insisted, with venom in her bite. "I want my people back, and the sooner we talk it over the sooner we can go get them. Either we talk in your private setup or out here in the open, doesn't bother me."

Danse itched to urge her caution. She was creating a scene, and Maxson couldn't afford to appear weak before his men and women. Pushing him into a corner was never wise.

"Paladin Harper, I'll remind you of your place with a level of leniency after what you've just endured, but don't push your favour. You can barely stand on your own two feet, let alone be fit for a debriefing and the planning of a rescue effort. You will report to medical as ordered, or you will be dragged there. The choice is yours."

Paladin Svensson took a step up behind her, and Ilya tightened to resist, her eyes flaring at Maxson. "The longer we wait, the more they'll suffer and die. We need to be out there finding them now!"

"We are not discussing this right now!" the elder grated back, raising his voice only a fraction at her. "Paladin Svensson, please assist Harper to the Prydwen."

"Yes, Elder Maxson."

As the man took her arm, Danse tensed out of instinct but knew he was powerless to help her.

"The slaves," Ilya persevered, pulling against Svensson's light tug. "I promised them I would protect them and I will. I'm not leaving without seeing that they're fed and treated. I'm stationing my crew to guard them."

Maxson considered her through sharp, assessing eyes, then allowed her one nod. "Very well. They will be well provided for." There was a reassuring lift to his brow. "You have my word."

The incredulous angle of her stare made plain her disbelief.

"Paladin, take her to see the slaves. Ten minutes, that's all. _Don't_ let her out of your sight."

"Understood, Sir."

With a fleeting glance at Danse, Ilya nodded for him to stay close and he moved to her at once. But the eyes she then gave to Maxson before turning rivalled the heat of the midday desert sun.


	67. Perfect Chaos

**Perfect Chaos**

* * *

He was a demon.

A demon in man-skin.

But the demon could bleed. And if Maxson didn't give her what she wanted, then he would bleed again. Oh he would.

 _One. Two. Three. Just a few more steps, and you're there._

Ilya bluffed a confident walk to where the Brotherhood had stashed the slaves in a metallic prefab field structure. Internally, she brooded.

She didn't care that he'd come back to personally lead the effort for her rescue. So that he could gain brownie points from her gratefulness? Save the helpless damsel in distress and be the hero? Fuck him. Danse got to her first. How's that for a _dead synth?_ And what about the Minutemen? The ones who were slaughtered, tortured, raped out in the open before they were then ripped apart. The ones that were still alive and would suffer all that tenfold.

She didn't care what Danse said. Maxson did this. Set it up. Wound the battlefield around his cunning finger and then let it fall apart in perfect chaos.

He probably thought it was all a masterpiece of art. He would probably jerk himself off to his masterpiece later tonight while sucking on a fat cigar.

 _The little big fuck._

Her brooding was enough to distract from her exhaustion, and she was inside the metal shelter before she realised it, not hesitating to lean a hand on a support column near the entrance. The sight of the recovered slaves hit her with just as much horror as the first time she had seen them. These poor, tormented souls. She suddenly felt wizened by the tragedy of everything around her, overwhelmed by the weight of it, and rubbed raw by her failure. Just standing still in the entrance felt like an uphill climb.

The turn of heads at her entrance cascaded across the huddle of slaves as they sat together in the sand. There had to be at least fifty of them. All looking to her with hope on their hollowed faces.

 _What am I doing? How do I do this? Thinking I can take on Maxson and the Brotherhood and save these people? What was I thinking?_

 _You weren't thinking,_ she heard back. _You're going insane in the mind, rotting inside, and now you've taken on the world. You will fail them all and lose yourself along the way._

 _Fuck off._

The feeling of Danse's steady presence close at her back helped to settle Ilya; he seemed to sense the emotional effect seeing the slaves had on her. But even so, she still desperately wanted to turn and stuff her face into his chest to cry out the day's horrors. Plenty of time for that later, she assured herself.

"We saved as many as we could from the fire, but we lost a few. We counted six bodies in total," Paladin Svensson explained with a note of regret. Ilya nodded silently. He looked to be in his forties, with greying auburn cropped hair, and with the eyes of a kind man. But Ilya didn't let that influence her. He was one of Maxson's. "Our scribes have given them water and small field rations. They don't want to overload their stomachs with too much food too soon. They're being rotated through anti-rad treatments a handful at a time and being given brief medical exams. We'll give them full checks once everyone's been made comfortable." He indicated to a far corner of the shelter, where there was a medical booth separated by privacy panels. Several slaves were seated around a small unit of scribe field medics, who were administering doses of RadAway from I.V stands.

Ilya made a quick squint when she recognized Scribe Haylen, nose buried in her clipboard, and she wondered if Danse noticed her too. "Who gave the order to treat and provide for them?" Ilya asked Svensson. Maxson had only just agreed to it less than two minutes ago and the order couldn't have been carried out before she even got here.

"Elder Maxson did," Svensson provided, as if her question was redundant.

The fuck? "Funny. He seemed dead-set on letting them walk free without any compassion from the Brotherhood before I demanded they be treated."

Catching her confusion, Svensson nodded and ushered her and Danse over to a secluded corner where crates and sacks of supplies had been piled. He dropped his voice. "I don't know all the details, but the incursion forces apparently came across something disturbing at one of the slave processing camps. A lot of men came back quieter than I'd ever known them to be. Even Elder Maxson seemed shaken by whatever it was they found. It may have inspired a change of heart in him."

Ilya folded her arms sceptically. Why was he telling her this in confidence? "I find it hard to imagine anything would inspire a change in him unless it was for his own benefit."

The look Svensson responded with was one of knowing, almost amusement. He must hear similar opinions of Maxson often. "While the elder is strict and damned near terrifying when he wants to be, he's not without his compassionate streak."

"You have no idea how many times I've heard that," Ilya muttered, leaning just a notch back enough to bump her elbow against Danse's bulk, directing her comment his way. The form behind her didn't shift his weight in response.

"It's true," the paladin insisted. "Look, everyone in the Brotherhood is aware of the tension between you and Elder Maxson, and that if this alliance falls through, then so will this theatre of war. Nobody wants to have to crawl back to the Commonwealth because the Institute took advantage of the Brotherhood's absence with the Minutemen going on strike and refusing to collaborate. Imagine it. We'd have war on two fronts, coming at us from all sides, while our forces were busy with infighting. As proud as the Brotherhood is, we're outnumbered, and we need your help."

She almost had the strength to chuckle with doubt. "If only Maxson could bring himself to say that."

"Give him time and a chance, and he might just."

"Hah. You sound like Dan–" she cut herself off before finishing that thought, then split off eye contact as the paladin went silent. She could almost feel Danse's discomfort behind her, and shame collected tightly in her chest. _Think before you speak, fuckwit._

After a few empty seconds, Svensson turned his head back on her and spoke with the same quiet. "Harper, just so you know, not everyone in the Brotherhood feels alienated by you spearheading the Minutemen, or your defiance of Elder Maxson."

Ilya searched him with a wary frown as he paused for her to reflect on that. That was a very dangerous thing to say aloud. The longer she searched him, the more serious his expression turned. She stayed wary. "Did Maxson advise you to appeal to my soft nature?"

"Soft nature?" the paladin echoed, then he chuffed fondly at her refusal to budge. "You must know that's not your reputation in the ranks. You just demonstrated that by bluntly speaking your mind and putting me on the spot. And to answer your question; no, I'm not under orders to befriend and sweet-talk you into playing nice. I'm speaking with you candidly because I respect you, fellow Paladin."

Balancing her gaze on him a moment longer, Ilya eventually sighed with tired sarcasm. "Paladin Svensson, my people are dead or enslaved, I have a desert-full of slaves to free, and I'm basically dead myself. I'm not in the mood for games or cryptic charm. If you're trying to seduce me, you're below my league. Haven't you heard the hot gossip? I'm fucking the elder."

That felt good, but in hindsight, Danse was probably reeling in his helmet right about now.

The burst of shock in Svensson's blink was her trivial reward, but he recovered quickly. "Not trying to befriend or seduce you, Paladin Harper. Just trying to lay out my intentions with the future of the alliance. But you're right, you've been through hell, and now is not the time for it."

Still not really sure what _it_ was and what he was trying to get at, Ilya took a scale of the man's sincerity and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, for now. Mainly because she was too damned exhausted to keep up the caution. She'd get Danse to give her the dirt on him and Deacon to do his spy thing and do a background check on him later.

She sighed compliantly and chewed her lip. "Okay, we'll have a chat later. Could I have a moment with Scribe Haylen before we go?"

"Sure, but keep it quick. The elder will strip me of rank and make me parade the camp naked if you pass out in my charge."

She almost laughed again. He adapted fast to her casual nature, unlike Danse when they first started off. Even now he was still adapting to her, but it was the endearing thing about him. "I've got Deadskull to keep me on my feet."

Paladin Svensson cast her bodyguard a circumspect nod and watched as she slowly stepped her way over to the medical booth, 'Deadskull' shadowing her closely like a safety net. Even if her vision was unfocused and swaying from the remnants of that poison, she felt safe with Danse nearby and trusted him implicitly if she stumbled or suddenly carked it.

Haylen met her halfway with an assessing look, only briefly glancing across at Danse. She didn't seem to recognise anything familiar about him on first glance; too focused on Ilya's fragile progress. With her field scribe armour kit designed with the Commonwealth's temperate climate in mind, Ilya knew she must be sweltering in this nuclear desert heat.

"Harper..." she began in pouring sympathy. "You really should be taking it easy..."

"Too much to do. I'll sleep when I'm dead."

Not looking impressed, Haylen shook her head. "I can't even imagine what you've just been through. But we'll get the Minutemen back. The Brotherhood is just getting started and those raiders will regret everything they've done out here." Her sense of determination was near believable, but Ilya saw the heavy doubt behind her eyes.

"The slaves, how bad is it?" she asked lowly, deciding to avoid the matter of her lost Minutemen. She didn't have the energy to pretend optimism.

Haylen handed over her clipboard and then glanced at the balding heads and soiled rags with renewed sympathy. Ilya leafed through the cases while she listened, trying her best to keep the dried blood on her fingers from flaking onto the papers. "They've had it rough. With the rads brought by the storm systems and the hard labour, not to mention the ill treatment, some of them might not even make it much longer despite our best attempts to treat them. Anti-rads can only do so much, and once advanced radiation sickness sets in for such a long period of time, there's not much to be done to mitigate the cellular deterioration. As for the blunt physical trauma some of them have sustained, there's a lot of cases of bacterial infection and gangrene, even some type of radioactive parasites that thrive in irradiated blood. Once we've seen to all of them and done what we can to make them comfortable, I'll take my findings to Senior Scribe Neriah and Knight-Captain Cade, see what they can turn up."

Handing back the clipboard, Ilya worried her bottom lip as she folded her arms. "And this is only the frontier outpost, right next to their forward processing camp. These slaves will be somewhat fresh, mostly from the Commonwealth. Hell, what are we gonna find deeper in their territory?"

"I don't like to imagine. If Elder Maxson is serious about not only liberating the slaves, but also treating them, then we're going to need a heck of a lot more medial supplies, food and purified water, and some tight quarantine protocols. Prydwen staff will need to be rotated onto field ops in wide berths just to stretch out the med rationing. But that will be Knight-Sergeant Gavil's problem to deal with." The scribe's daunted look was swapped for a curious frown. "How did you convince Maxson to take in the recovered slaves? Last I heard, we weren't taking responsibility for them—something I didn't agree with, for the record."

"It wasn't me," Ilya shrugged. "Word is, something out there changed his mind. Something worse than this," she gestured to the slaves. "But I'm not holding my breath on him keeping his word, or having a change of heart that suddenly."

Haylen had a thoughtful look about her, but she didn't comment on Maxson. "I'm not sure I want to know what it was they found out there. Seeing inside a super mutant hive is nightmare-inducing enough."

"I hear you," Ilya concurred. Danse had to relive those nightmares every night.

"Harper," Svensson called from the entrance. "It's time to go."

With a nod, Ilya turned back to Haylen quickly. "Think you could make me a copy of those medical files? I want to keep up to date with their rehab progress."

"Yes, ma'am," was Haylen's avid response.

"Thanks. Keep up the good work, Haylen."

"You, too, Harper. These people are lucky to have you looking out for them. And... just make sure to look out for yourself, too?"

With a weary smile that came only from the outside, Ilya left Haylen with the other scribes and made her way back to Svensson. She was aware that some of the slaves were watching her leave with desperate intensity, and that many of them probably wanted to talk with her and make requests for her to save their loved ones still out there somewhere, but without the Minutemen, she was in no position to be making promises or be giving out false hope. Besides, she knew if she stopped to absorb the cruelty of their experiences, the walls that she was fighting so hard to keep erected would finally crumble. They couldn't see her do that.

The crew had amassed outside to wait for her, but they didn't turn when she reappeared. They were all distracted by a commotion in the camp.

A young Brotherhood soldier was held between two others, wracked by muscle spasms. His face was locked in a silent grimace while the men shouted for medical aid, then he began to foam at the mouth in violent convulsions. His eyes rolled back, and the men took on the sudden load of his weight as he lost all control of his body in a full-blown seizure.

Medical staff rushed in with a stretcher and armfulls of equipment while those surrounding the scene watched on in shock. The crew stood idle to watch with an air of melancholy, like they knew he was already dead.

"Report. What happened to him?" one of the senior medical scribes demanded as she secured the young soldier onto his side, then shot his vein with a syringe. Probably an immune booster.

One of the soldiers holding him shook his head bewilderedly. "He was complaining about a stinging scratch from those vines with the red flowers. Never crossed my mind that it could turn into this."

 _Redshade,_ Ilya thought distantly.

The scribe swore. "This is why I hate first contact ops. We're dealing with a possible unidentified flora contamination. We need to get him to the quarantine wing ASAP."

"We _need_ to stabilise him," another of the scribes interjected.

Before anything else could be argued, a gruelling sound of strain broke free as the young soldier lathered more profusely at the mouth, the poison taking its cruel clutches. Then, the field kit hooked up to the soldier's bio signs ran a droning alarm. He was flat lining.

"Shit," the first scribe swore again.

Together they scrambled their efforts to resuscitate, but in the end it was fruitless.

"He's gone," the first scribe declared through a clinical mask, though her irritation was clear.

One of the two soldiers—probably squadmates—was still holding the man's body on his side. He shared the scribe's irritation as he stared down at the dissolving foam patching the sand where his squadmate's mouth hung lifeless. "Why didn't the scouts report how deadly those vines are? Did they bring back samples for testing? I don't remember seeing anything with red flowers up in the Prydwen's labs. Christ, if they'd done their jobs, he might still be alive!"

The senior scribe brought her gaze up on the soldier, sedate. "First contact always brings the risk of foreign contagion. Those vines look like they were purposefully grown over the cave entrances, and nowhere else. Scouts probably never got a chance to extract samples. Now we know."

"Now we know," the soldier repeated under his breath, returning his focus on his dead squadmate. He seemed to take some form of comfort in knowing he didn't die wastefully, that at least some scrap of knowledge was gained that could prevent more deaths.

Gradually, the camp resumed its mucking-in and defence set-up, though a grim disquiet had nestled in.

Hancock broke the collective reverie of the crew. "Damn, one tiny scratch from a pretty flower. Just a kid, too. This place is deeper than hell."

"Hell within hell," Deacon concurred with that rare solemn tone, which always cut Ilya with a chill.

* * *

Richter had been held up by a guard of power armour soldiers upon landing—Svensson's order. He hadn't liked the look of him, which was fair enough to Ilya. They could hold him up, but only on the condition that she was free to wander the outpost in search of someone specific. Svenssen had reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that he accompany her. She had agreed, too. So, they had come to an agreement. An agreeably straightforward one.

Richter had only scowled and shrugged while she had ambled off in order to watch over Danse, that little phantom of anxiety in her gut eating away at her. Clearly her gut had been on her side with how he had gotten himself into the worst situation imaginable right next to Maxson. Right where he _shouldn't_ have been.

She had wanted to kick him.

She _still_ wanted to kick him.

One day, that damned honour of his was going to get him killed.

But was it his sense of duty that drove him to rush to Maxson's defence, or the PTSD stirring up his extreme protectiveness over anyone he felt was in his charge?

Danse/Deadskull was now hot on her heels, along with the rest of the crew on his, as Paladin Svensson led Ilya back to the vertibird pad.

Grand Zealot Richter waited calmly in his old-world Marine issue armour, with the golden embellishments of the Children of Atom sigil that unsettled the Brotherhood.

"Since I have an entire crew of outlaws behind me now, can I have my man back?" Ilya mocked on approach.

Svensson sighed and cast a hand signal to the troopers surrounding Richter. "You can. But it would have saved you a lot of trouble if you'd declared him to be with the Children of Atom in the first place."

Ilya only murmured in response. She was in the mood for dishing out shit, but not in the mood for catching it. Best to just shut her mouth.

Only Deadskull was given clearance to temporarily accompany her up to the Prydwen, as she stubbornly refused to embark otherwise. It would be dangerous for his cover, but she knew he wouldn't be letting her out of his sight for a long while.

She had a quick discussion with the crew about getting them stationed on guard duty and set up with a place to bunker in, with Svensson offering to assist any way he could. Richter was grounded for now while she needed to speak with Kells about ferrying in the rest of the crew. Then she had a few parting words with everyone before settling down in the vertibird. She roughened Dogmeat's fur. Clay-Crawler was uncharacteristically quiet.

The Flight Deck looked relatively unscathed from the Prydwen's gung-ho entry over the battlefield. Few of the raiders' weapons fire would have even dented the steel hull, and there wasn't any sign of blood splatter from any soldiers catching a bullet. Concentrated laser fire, on the other hand, was a different story. Maybe sending the airship charging into battle wasn't as reckless as Ilya had thought. Maxson had weighed the risks well, she realised, despite herself.

She wondered what he was up to down in camp, taking his sweet time getting his last fill of violence instead of mounting a rescue mission for her Minutemen. Sourly, she wiped him from her mind as she made her way inside the hull.

Climbing up the rungs to the crew deck was a struggle, her muscles quaking in protest, but Danse helped by first silently pulling her down from her initial pathetic progress, climbing up himself, then crouching down at the top of the rungs to reach in and pull her up and out.

It was embarrassing as shit, but on the flip-side, she shamelessly enjoyed the brief physical contact with him, and the feeling of his strength wholly lifting her.

He waited in the hall as Ilya entered Cade's infirmary, just by the entranceway within earshot. She could tell he was coiled with tension being amongst his former people. One familiar gesture or nuance of body language, and someone might click. Thankfully he was well strapped up and packed in armour, which helped to prevent anyone recognising his specific muscle form and physique.

He did have one hell of an ass.

Cade was his usual cordial self. He greeted her with the sympathy that was really beginning to grind, and directed her to a seat on the nearest gurney. After a few pokes and prods, he said she needed a round of fluids and a rebalance of electrolytes. She was docked with an I.V bag before she knew it.

"I hear it was quite rough down there," the doctor intoned gently, dragging Ilya's unfocused gaze up on his face. Sympathy. "If you need to talk, you've only to start."

Her chest swelled from that little piece that beat, and suddenly she battled tears. But within one breath, she was composed. One nod.

Cade considered her, then nodded his understanding. "I'll have one of my assistants patch up your minor wounds." He dropped a bottle of purified water next to her gurney, then went back to his terminal.

Quiet, still. She realised she had been dreading this moment, where her mind could spill free and take bites out of her sanity. Anger bled off to desolation, and her throat worked to snuff out emotion.

The memory of Jet streaming down her airways and sweetly infiltrating her senses fell on her from nowhere. It was in times like these where it had become her ally, getting her through when she otherwise would have crumbled.

 _No. I have Danse now. I don't need it._

Anger. She reached back for it, anything to escape the cold grasp of despair.

 _Anger is productive. I can use it._

But no matter how hard she tried to dwell on the arrowing sense of betrayal she felt whenever she thought of Maxson, she was just too withered to rummage through herself for that comforting anger.

* * *

After an hour of forced R&R, Maxson still hadn't shown. Ilya was dismissed from the infirmary and free to her own devices, so she worked her way down to the command bridge in search of Lancer-Captain Kells, asking him directly for permission to leave the Prydwen.

Permission denied.

So she was essentially imprisoned on the airship. Again. Maxson sure loved putting her on a leash.

Upon taking her leave, she caught Kells sweep over Deadskull with a keen eye. It lifted the hairs down the back of her neck. These people were too sharp. Despite the gratifying 'fuck you' they were giving to everyone just with the fact that Danse was back aboard the Prydwen and secretly getting all up in faces, she shouldn't be dragging him around with her like this.

"Come on, let's just go to ground," she mumbled to him, dispirited.

They both hesitated at the hatchway to Ilya's quarters—Danse's old quarters. Her hand hovered on the hatch a moment before she sucked it up and pushed it open. It creaked on its hinges as the two stepped inside.

Ilya absorbed the sight of all Danse's belongings, undisturbed, everything right where he'd left it before the shitstorm that led to his exile. Nothing had been touched. Dust had settled. Standing there looking at everything felt like looking through a museum window into his past, at what his life used to be.

His final echoes left preserved.

She hadn't wanted to set foot in here. Felt like a violation of his memory, as if he was dead and disturbing his things would be like washing her hands of him. He always said she was too sentimental.

Ilya heard the sound of Danse pulling away his helmet and she twisted back to him. "You alright?"

His eyes glossed over everything before settling onto her. Seeing his face again warmed her chest, even if his expression was dispersed into lament. "Yeah," was all he said. His eyes asked her the same question.

Those gorgeous brown eyes were like magnets. Ilya reached him in two strides and slammed him with her crushing embrace, wrapping her arms around his neck. He sighed deeply and one of his hands went to the back of her head to press her in as close as possible. She let herself get lost in the intimate smell of his warm skin, the feeling of his roughened jaw against her neck, and closed her eyes to savour it all.

They hung there for a long time, soaking up the pureness of each other, the solidity. Their piece of heaven in hell, the calm in the chaos.

When Ilya reluctantly drew away to soak up more of Danse's eyes, his features were arranged with taut emotions. He looked different. Older in the passage of a single day. His dark hair was unkempt and tousled with sand and sweat, facial hair overgrown to the realms of a short beard, face dirty and rugged. No less attractive in her eyes. The scruffy look suited him.

What worried her were the deep troughs beneath his eyes and the strained network of fine lines at their edges. That was her doing.

 _You knew you would destroy him._

 _No, Maxson did that._

"I still can't believe you're really here," she confessed before bumping her forehead to his.

Danse blew out a breath of relieved air and stroked his hand through her hair. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

"I'm sorry I left you behind."

"I'm sorry I was late."

With a finger trailing down his furry jaw, Ilya slowly encouraged him into a soft kiss. He was still hesitant with making moves on her, but she found it just another endearing thing about him.

The kiss was delicate and healing, just what they both needed. They sipped on each other's lips until they had their fill, then bumped their foreheads back together like snug puzzle pieces. Both sighed peacefully.

Ilya's world was still spinning on itself, her bones and muscles aching with her shellshocked head, but as long as she was in Danse's arms she had gravity and shelter.

Suddenly she slapped both his shoulders. "What the fuck were you thinking out there?" she hissed at his stunned face. "Getting close to Maxson like that. You could have blown your cover."

Danse held her back by the waist as he digested her polar shift. Then he sighed. "I know it was impulsive, but I didn't go down there planning to end up fighting right at his side. The situation was getting out of hand and I made a decision."

Ilya held her tongue and forced herself to let him explain. He wasn't being apologetic or pleading for her understanding, he was asserting himself with a stubborn righteousness. It irritated her.

At her face, Danse plunged back in. "It was in the heat of the moment and I acted on instinct. Arthur's—...Maxson's life was in jeopardy. I wasn't about to just stand and watch him be executed."

"Like he was fine about standing and watching you be executed by me?"

Tension stole across his shoulders beneath her palms, and she knew she'd hit a nerve. But he needed to understand that Maxson wasn't the boy with the bright blue eyes any more. "I didn't like the way he was looking at you, like he _knew._ You know how smart he is. Remember he knew about us just on suspicion alone. He could have killed you."

"Could have, but didn't," Danse asserted firmly.

Ilya pursed her lips at him. They were still holding each other despite bickering, and when she slid her palms off his shoulders and turned to pull away, his hands were reluctant to free her waist. Ilya paced a few steps and stared at the Brotherhood flag on its pole at the foot of her/his bed.

"Ilya," Danse began patiently, his voice steadied. "The rips in your jumpsuit, those bloodied finger marks... What happened to you out there?"

She had been expecting him to approach the issue head-on, he rarely left issues to fester unless they were his own, but she had been so exhausted that she hadn't thought up a way to rebuff him.

He took her silence as a bad sign. "If you're not ready to talk about it, I understand. But know that I'm here whenever you feel up to it."

She nodded. "There's just too much going on. I need to keep it together. You know?"

"I know," he conceded gently. After all, he knew all about needing space to process trauma. He let the silence drip by a while. "Haylen was right, you know. We're going to get the Minutemen back."

She gave another nod. She was thankful for his topic switch, but speaking about the Minutemen was still painful, and she wasn't sure how to contribute. Like the words had been wiped from her brain.

He tried again. "Once the Brotherhood is settled in and has the outpost secured, they'll commit to a rescue mission. You'll see."

"...Haylen didn't know it was you," Ilya said haphazardly, grasping at anything to redirect the topic. Talking about them made it more real that she had failed them.

Jarred, Danse took a moment to adjust. "No, she didn't," he agreed. "She didn't spare me much of a glance. Though I wonder that if she had, would she then have recognised me... We worked together for a long time in the field on recon. You tend to pick up on people's movements and body language after a while. Although I was in my power armour for the majority of the time." He was babbling, trying to diffuse her tension and discomfort.

Suddenly, one of her hands splayed back through her hairline, catching on clumps of dried blood. "I don't know about this, Danse. It's so dangerous for you to be here. We're playing with fire."

The silence didn't last as long this time. His approach was taken one audible step at a time. "I would walk through fire for you. You know that. If it ever comes down to it, I'll gladly spill my own blood if it means keeping you by my side."

"That's what I'm scared of."

His nearing presence filled the skin of her back with a tingling comfort. "I'm scared too, Ilya," he admitted honestly. "If I lost you, I don't know what I'd do."

Tears burned for release from nowhere. That unguarded confession squeezed her heart. Of course he was scared, even if he didn't believe his emotions were real, but hearing him actually tell her... Ilya turned back to him, seeing his face sloped with worry. Without a word she began to pick apart his armour kit and pull the individual plates away.

He stood prone while she disarmed him. "...What are you doing?"

"Taking off your armour."

"Yes, but why?" He sounded heedful.

She smiled fondly at his alarmed face. "Don't worry. I'm not stripping you off so I can seduce you to drown out my sorrow." He quirked his brow down on her in his adorable way. "I just need to be close to you."

After working off his chestplate, she dropped it to the floor and then slithered up to his warm chest, tucking her arms in like clipped wings and resting her head against his abundant shoulder. The layer of muscle there provided a great pillow.

She heard a mild rumble of delight in his chest as his arms folded around her. Eventually, his chin rested on the crown of her head.

"I could fall asleep in here," Ilya mumbled inside his chest.

He hummed a chuckle, then she felt him maneuvering her so he could scoop her up and carry her over to the bed. It was pretty impressive how he managed to settle himself down with her still in his arms, then gently plop her in snug to his side as if she was a waif. He tucked her in under an arm, and she nestled her head into the crook of his shoulder.

"Just don't bottle this all up from me for too long," Danse advised her as they lay feeding off each other's warmth. It sounded a little like a plea, and it twisted in on Ilya's heart with guilt.

"I won't. Just give me some time."

His hand went to her arm that she had resting on his chest and he rubbed along it. Already she felt herself dozing away, completely saturated in him. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.

"I can't stay, remember. They'll want me off the ship at shut-eye."

"Just stay a little longer. Until I fall asleep."

"Alright."

She was asleep within seconds.

* * *

 **A/N:** Last day of my personal deadline, phew! Sorry for the month-long wait, guys. But good news, I scored myself a new job with more steady hours and team members that actually give a shit about the welfare of their staff, so with luck I'll get back on track with more regular updates and actually have a life again. (First world problems)


	68. Heathens

**Heathens**

* * *

Procrastination wasn't something Danse practised on the regular. Until the rollercoaster of his life over the past few weeks, he hadn't even understood how the concept of procrastinating could be so overruling to some people's lives. How hard was it to be productive? If something needed to be done, just get up and do it. It wasn't going to do itself.

But right now, Danse fully understood just how overruling it was. Ilya was here, in his arms, safe and sound asleep, and he didn't want to alter the perfect, pristine moment in time.

" _Just stay a little longer..."_

He indulged in the way she slept on his chest, the idyllic rhythm of her breathing, the fine flickers through her closed eyes as she dreamed, the gossamer black silk of her lashes with each of those flickers. Admiring her sleep reminded him of how it felt to admire a cat sleep, a feisty, regal creature in its tender moment of vulnerability. He comforted in the idea of her tranquilly wading through her own dream world, free from her dizzying burdens and horrific experiences. He cradled her peace in his arms and he cherished the responsibility.

He was here now. He would watch over her, keep her safe, keep her sheltered. He would be her safe haven.

And he would burn down this entire desert if she was ever brought to harm again.

He hadn't wanted to invasively inspect her wounds while she was awake in fears he would unsettle her, after her ordeal out there. But now that she was resting, he took a closer look.

With a finger he stroked a splay of hair from her cheek, stewing at the sight of the thin cuts that swept up into her hairline—fingernails, sharpened. A substantial bruise was blossoming under her cheekbone, fresh off the battlefield. Blood still freckled and smeared her skin, and he wished he could spend the time cleaning it away without waking her.

But those tears in her suit, the torn neckline, and the unmistakable evidence of sexual assault were testing his composure. _Who did this to you?_ He felt the budding of rage, but continued to stroke at her hair with soft composure. _Who dared to touch you?_ He would kill them. No question of it. It called to him to be done with a primal sense of duty.

As for the day-old bruising around her throat, only refreshed raw by the beast raider's dead hand, Danse's mind went to only one conclusion.

Arthur.

It had to have been done before the Brotherhood deployed from the Commonwealth. But the very thought of Arthur being responsible sat off-kilter in Danse's gut. Like it just _couldn't be._ Arthur had never exhibited any views or behaviours throughout his upbringing to suggest he considered women beneath him or that he had violent tendencies toward them. He even made a conscious effort to have his sect of the Brotherhood practice gender equality wherever applicable—of course taking into account the use of common sense regarding certain physical performance differentiations between men and women. The elder had gone out of his way to personally handle cases where female soldiers were treated with disrespect, from being singled out, verbally abused, and even subjected to physical harassment by sexist male soldiers. In fact, as a child, he often seemed intimidated by the other girls in training. He had been a bit of a timid boy.

Danse caught himself smiling at the memories and sharply pulled himself back in line.

His biased opinion aside, if he ever found out that Arthur had in fact laid a hand on Ilya, he would... _what?_ Confront the elder and get himself killed? Throw a suckerpunch and equally get himself killed?

He sighed heavily, instantly regretting it as Ilya moaned in her sleep. His eyes widened with momentary panic as she shuffled her body, her head rocking against his chest, disturbed, but then she was still once more and he relaxed. His sigh passed through tubed lips.

As Danse attentively stroked along Ilya's arm to soothe her back into a deep sleep, he wrestled with contradictory feelings on Arthur, especially after hearing how he had initially ordered the slaves to be set free without treatment or transportation. It was the classic push and pull between idealism and expediency. A strategic move to conserve resources, yes, but at the cost of inhumanity.

Ironic, considering Danse was cast out of the Brotherhood for being inhuman.

But those slaves were human, not synths or ghouls. The stark sight of their ribs gave powerful testament to the deprivation that they had known. It repulsed him. How could Maxson have first turned a blind eye to this atrocity? Was he losing his way, only grasping at threads of morality when it confronted him directly?

Danse feared most that it was due to him. The discovery of his true identity had really uprooted the young elder's clarity of mind. He would be questioning everything around him with an acute paranoia now.

Much like his own mind. So many events had transpired in so little time, his head was still rolling.

He pinched at the pressure point between his eyes. No matter how his head rolled, he needed to keep it together. Ilya needed him for his stability, and he feared most of all what would happen to her if she didn't slow down and confront whatever darkness was clutching at her. It had been building up inside her for so long, the pile of woes only growing heavier and heavier with each trauma she rolled over. How heavy could it grow until she cracked under its weight?

Even if they were now of mutual rank—were he still commissioned—and even if she carried more responsibilities than he ever had, he still felt as though she was under his wing. That feeling would probably never go away. He had been her commanding officer and she his charge, showing her the ropes of survival in her new world of an apocalyptic wasteland, what it meant to be a Brotherhood soldier, and above all, what it meant to be a leader.

With his third sigh of the evening, Danse knew it was time to shirk off his procrastination and leave Ilya. He checked the time on her Pip-Boy to confirm it was close to lights out at 2100 hours: 2036. Someone would be knocking at the door in minus fourteen minutes for him to get off the ship.

Clicking off her Pip-Boy, his gaze caught on the glint of gold banding Ilya's ring finger. She still wore her wedding ring. He took a moment just to drink that in. Where before it had sparked feelings of jealousy, now, oddly, it didn't bother him all that much. She would forever be tied to her deceased husband, regardless of whether or not she found someone else. She had a son with him. Shared a life. Danse respected that, and didn't wish to compete with it. He just wanted to make her happy in whatever capacity he could.

He wondered about Shaun, if he would ever meet him, and what he would say to him if he did. He would like to meet him, he realised. Not to get his hands on the Director of the Institute, his creator, and wring his neck. Okay, partly. But more so because he was Ilya's son. It was a nebulous desire.

Then he wondered about his holotags he had given her, after she had saved him from himself down in that dreadful bunker. She wasn't wearing them, at least not that he could see. Maybe she had stashed them somewhere for safe keeping. Probably that. Anyway, why did it matter where they ended up? He no longer belonged to the Brotherhood. His heart and mind did, but not his shell.

He still didn't know if he was more than a shell. But not knowing was better than straight-up knowing he was just that.

Still... it wouldn't be so bad to keep those holotags as a memento. Would it?

Procrastinating. Damn it.

The bed creaked as Danse gingerly shifted Ilya aside and wiggled himself away as stealthily as possible, knowing he probably looked like a complete idiot in the process. After he had adjusted her sleeping form in a comfortable way and secured her head beneath the straw pillow, he bent and dropped a soft kiss onto her forehead. It felt wonderful just to do that. He could do that now, as freely as he wished to. Their relationship was still so new, but they had barely had time to sink into it with the rush of the war. He stood over her and just watched a moment.

She was so beautiful, inside and out, and it made his chest betray him with little pangs of feelings he was still getting accustomed to. He hated to just leave her. He knew that she would want him to wake her when it came time for him to leave, in order to see him off the ship safely... but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He knew she had been having troubles with insomnia, despite her efforts to hide it from him. She was finally getting some well-needed sleep. What if he woke her, and then she was unable to sleep again without him protecting her from possible threats within the Brotherhood? From Maxson? She obviously distrusted him, perhaps even feared him. Perhaps she was right to...

Danse just didn't know what Arthur was capable of any more.

 _I'm still procrastinating._

After donning his armour and helmet again, he spent the last five minutes perusing his old quarters, running his fingers over his old furniture and possessions, trinkets, tools, and backup armaments. He looked at the cat bowl near the hatch and wondered if he would see one of the cats again in passing. Deathclaw, Radcat, Merlin, and Excalibur. He could never tell them apart, however. Which was sloppy for a paladin who should have excellent attention to detail.

He remembered the first time Ilya had entered his personal quarters. The first thing she said was, _"_ _You like cats?"_ He had laughed at her. Of all the things to say. Then she had asked whether he was a cat or dog person. He couldn't give her an answer to that.

That had been a good night. His last night as Paladin Danse. Full of both their laughter. Full of her. Life had been so perfect in that one night. They had kissed for the first time. It went too far and crossed the line into forbidden territory, but looking back now, he didn't regret it.

Just looking at Ilya made his memories burn alive, and his hands had memories of their own. Skin, heat, pulse. Lust engorged his thoughts.

 _Stop it. She's just endured a sexual assault and I'm fantasising about her._

A soft rap on the door made his heart skitter. He glanced to Ilya. She remained asleep. With a final sigh, he left her and pulled open the hatch.

The uniform sent to collect him caused him to balk on the spot. It was Knight Rhys, and Knight Sergeant Muller.

 _You've got to be kidding me._

His two former subordinate knights came in the whole package of contempt for outsiders, completed with the seal of nasty scowls. To have the faceless wasterlander bodyguard opening the door to them must be like receiving an insult.

He had often thought about how Rhys had taken the news of him being a synth traitor. The knight was full-blooded Brotherhood, and no doubt took it to heart with a steel vendetta. Muller, he hadn't known for as long, having only served with him out in the Rad Land op to capture Clay-Crawler, but they bumped heads on more than one occasion, usually in regards to Ilya. Muller despised her for her unique and unorthodox initiation into the Brotherhood, and was outspoken about her apparent hold over Elder Maxson. He was probably the root of the rumours spiralling around the two having an affair. And because Danse had always defended her, Muller distrusted him and let it become personal.

Rhys took a moment to eye Danse from head to toe and back up again, and Danse felt sweat tack up between his shoulder blades. He had often had to rein the hot-tempered knight in line with his attitude toward even docile wastelanders they encountered during their recon of the Commonwealth. When Ilya rushed in to help them fight off that wave of ferals outside the police station, blowing them away with her skill and armed with deadly weapons and tongue, he hated her with a burning passion. Danse never imagined he would be on the receiving end of that hatred.

Rhys craned his head past Danse's shoulder guard to check on Ilya, seeing her blacked out on the bed. Danse wondered if Rhys thought it was as bad as it looked. Probably. After all, he was her bodyguard and they weren't bound by military conduct. They could do whatever they liked behind closed doors.

The knight stared long enough to ascertain that she was actually breathing, then his eyes swished back to Danse with raised eyebrows. As if to say, _Really? Whatever, none of my business._

Muller took the initiative. "We're here to escort you to the flight deck, Wastelander. Follow us. And don't try anything funny. We have authorization to shoot you if we feel threatened in the slightest."

Danse nodded, swallowing a barbed lump of annoyance. If he were in their position, his attitude would be no different toward a faceless, mute stranger with unsupervised access to vital personnel. _I was a hypocrite, yet I long to be that hypocrite again._

He followed Rhys and Muller over to the rungs down to the lower deck. He never thought he would set foot on the Prydwen again, yet here he was, walking amongst his old family. It was good to see Knight-Captain Cade again, and especially Lancer-Captain Kells, even if he must hate him on principle.

"Excuse me, Knight-Sergeant Muller, sir?" A hardy little squire walked in their direction, with a fellow squire quietly in tow, perhaps a little younger. Their eyes darted to Deadskull then meekly fled back to the sergeant. They were both in their leisure attire for sleeping, and should have been in their bunks waiting for ship-wide lights out.

"Yes, Squire Ortega?"

The girl's face lit up at the acknowledgement. "We were wondering if Paladin Harper brought Dogmeat up to the Prydwen with her? When he was sick, we helped make him better."

The sergeant addressed the two squires in a firm tone. "She didn't bring the dog with her this time, Ortega." The two girls deflated with disappointment. Muller stood considering them, then snapped, "Why are you both wandering the ship freely? It's almost time for lights-out, and you know how Captain Kells feels about lateness."

At this, the girls shrank from him like guilty puppies. Danse remembered all the times he too had berated naughty squires breaking their curfew. Children were never his forte, too unpredictable. But he still felt it was his duty to ensure their safety and make sure they were well disciplined, in order to ensure their own safety for themselves. After all, they represented the future of the Brotherhood.

Muller appeared to soften on their guilty looks. His tone turned more jocular. "Do you really want the captain to catch you running around the decks unsupervised? He'll have you out on the hull scraping away rust and bird poop."

Guilty smiles curved onto their faces, but they kept their heads down and shook them, chanting lowly, "No, sir. Sorry, sir."

"We just wanted to talk to Paladin Harper and Dogmeat, sir. We haven't met any wastelanders before, and Harper had lots of stories of the outside," Ortega explained in a quiet voice, shyly looking up to Muller, Rhys, then Deadskull, her big, wondering eyes gluing to his reflective visor before she looked back to the floor. She seemed terrified by his presence, but interested all the same.

"Wastelanders are nothing to be curious about, squires. They're lowlifes who pick scraps off streets and wastes like scavengers and kill whoever gets in their way. They don't have morals or honour." As Muller said this, he made sure to pass Danse a pointed glare. "See this one here? He's a heathen just like the rest of them. He would probably slit both your throats for a meal without a second thought if he saw you wandering out in the wastes." Then, looking back to the girls as they gaped up at Deadskull, he sighed out his nose, and lowered his voice as he squatted down to their level. "Listen, the both of you should keep away from Paladin Harper from now on, no matter how nice she is to you. Remember that she worked closely with Danse for many months, and who knows how being in close proximity to him for that long could have altered her mindset. She could be dangerous. She could even be a synth herself."

Danse saw red for a few blinks as he stared at Muller. How dare he plant such a malicious seed in the heads of those impressionable squires. The two girls looked wide-eyed with dismay.

"But-but if she's a synth, why did she kill Danse?" Ortega stuttered.

"It's just a theory. Maybe to keep Elder Maxson fooled. But don't worry, Elder Maxson is no fool, and he'll make sure you're safe from her. We're watching her very closely. If she really is a synth, he'll find out and he'll kill her himself and have her head displayed on a spike, don't you worry."

The girls' faces were brightened with pride at the mention of their beloved elder, and Ortega nodded firmly to Muller's words. "Elder Maxson will find out, he always knows what to do. But I really hope Paladin Harper isn't a synth... I like her a lot, she tells us stories about the Old-World and lets us play with Dogmeat. She's one of my biggest role-models. She found the Institute for us, got the nukes for Liberty Prime, _and_ she killed Danse for us. I wanna be just like her when I'm a soldier."

Muller forged his smile as he listened to the girl rant about Ilya, but Rhys didn't even both being that polite. His expression never changed from its sour set. But then the younger squire spoke up for the first time, and her sudden vehemence was so unexpected and out-of-turn that even Ortega looked startled.

"Paladin Danse was one of my heroes, like Elder Maxson. What a rotten liar he was. I'm glad he's gone!"

Danse felt that in the chest, and his heart constricted from each bitter beat it gave. Even the youths hated him. They all hated him. Everything he had worked toward for so many years in the Brotherhood, all his progress, all his accomplishments, all of his carefully and meticulously constructed reputation, wasted. His memory and legacy, tarnished and vilified. He felt the crash of emotions of that very day upon discovering his true identity rolling back on top of him, and it was heavy. Sullen and heavy.

Suddenly, he wanted to be off the Prydwen with such an intensity that he felt claustrophobic. Muller was saying something else to the two squires, but Danse barely registered it. A discreet glance down the corridor showed the crew in the mess watching him with _in_ discreet stares. He felt exposed, like he was out in the open without a shred of cover from hostile snipers. His former brothers and sisters glared with such contempt that he felt convinced they knew he was a synth.

 _They know._

 _Do they?_

 _Could they?_

 _What if they do?_

 _They know._

 _Remain calm. They don't know. I'm being paranoid._

They knew and they were plotting his death. They whispered of his traitorous sins and scalded him with their baleful eyes. He should have woken Ilya. This was a reckless decision. Just imagine if he got caught, how she would think of him. The reckless fool. There would be no saving him from Maxson this time.

"That's the spirit, kid," Rhys approved, though his stony face betrayed no emotion. "You keep that anger close to your heart and use it the next time you meet a synth. Danse lied to all of us, and I'm glad he's dead too."

At first abashed by her outburst, the youngest squire now grew bouyed by Rhys' approval. She stood an inch taller and puffed her chest with pride. Her open aggression toward Paladin Danse was not only approved, it was commended. Now she would wear that commendation loudly and proudly.

Danse just wanted to be gone, and stood numb and powerless as his name was reduced to dirt and spat on right at his feet. He just wanted to be gone and cower in a hole somewhere.

After Muller sent the squires back to their bunks, he and Rhys carried out their orders and escorted Danse out to the flight deck where a vertibird waited, churning contently.

He made to board, escape within reach, but a vice hand on his shoulder stalled him in place. Rhys spun him roughly and speared him with a razor gaze.

"I don't like how you just walked aboard this ship because you're her bodyguard," the knight menaced, voice edged like his razor eyes. "And I don't like how you hide your face behind that helmet and just stand back silently, watching everything. It's unsettling, and you don't want to unsettle the Brotherhood. I don't like your boldness. I don't like _Harper's_ boldness. She gets away with too much."

Danse felt his pulse pushing against the walls of his veins and heard it drumming in his ears with a deafening racket. Knight Rhys was perhaps the most patriotic soldier Danse had ever had under his command, and he had garnered his full respect. But he could also be a hot-head, uncompromising in his judgements of people and their motives. A great attribute in the field when faced with moral obstacles. Not so great for public relations.

"How do I know you're not a synth under there?" Danse swallowed on the dry thickness of his throat. "I trust Elder Maxson knows what he's doing, and that he has good reason for letting a faceless, mute scum walk the ship, but I don't trust Harper, and I sure as hell don't trust you." He shoved a hard finger at Danse's chestplate, and Danse absorbed the force like a brick wall, but consciously maintained a neutral posture. The last thing he wanted to do was challenge the knight and just make things worse for himself.

"You're a heathen to us. You're not welcome. So you best watch yourself. Tell Harper that I'll be watching both of you very, very closely. Write it to her or something. Oh, wait, you're an uneducated waste of space, you probably can't write, can you? Well, find a way to tell her, I don't care how. Just make sure she knows. Nod if you understand me."

So Danse nodded, though his upper lip twitched with a nerve of anger. He stole a look at Muller as the man stood to one side, observing the threat with a bland expression.

Sated with the acknowledgement, Knight Rhys turned and walked, falling in behind Muller. Danse spent a few seconds gathering his composure, a medley of emotions ripping up his innards. Anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, panic, and depression.

Stepping up into the vertibird, he let his mind fog over into a meditative stand-by mode, too fatigued to keep focus. Now he had to see to the kids downstairs, and not bump into Maxson on the way...

* * *

 **A/N:** _All my friends are heathens take it slow..._ :P

-So some of you might not even remember who Muller is since it's been so long. In normal circumstances if you were reading a completed novel, you wouldn't have to wait weekly or monthly for new chapters and end up forgetting characters and events. Just for a recap, Knight-Sergeant Muller was Danse's second-in-command during his 'Rad Land' operation to extract a specimen, where they ended up taking Clay-Crawler. He was introduced in chapter 6: _Sapphires and Shadows_ , and basically took the role of the asshat opposition to Ilya and Danse. As for Rhys, well we all know he's the camp asshat :P

-The comment the younger squire blurted about Danse being her hero but that she's glad he's gone, was in-game. When I first heard it, it made me very sad-faced :(


	69. Wicked Game

**Wicked Game**

* * *

To say he was on edge was a major understatement. As soon as the vertibird touched down in a squall of sand and grit, an armoured unit of Brotherhood penned Danse in and demanded his co-operation or 'deadly force would be applied.' He yielded his hands up and complied with their directions, even tolerated a few coercive shoves from behind in detached submission, his weary body taking the force of them with slack limbs. He braced himself for whatever they had in store for him now. It couldn't be any worse than what he had just endured. Too tired and numb to keep caring.

 _Do whatever you want to me,_ he thought to himself, hollowed. _I'm just a machine, in the end._

It was a red night. Murky blood-clouds blanketed the atmosphere, filtering the darkness with a dim glow. Danse knew it must have been produced by a combination of the red dust hazing the air and the oil wells set aflame in the deeper regions of the land, where the clans of raiders fought on a constant. The Brotherhood had only dipped its toes into the warzone, though it had made one hell of a big toeprint.

The temperature had cooled though the humidity of the lingering radstorm kept the air sticky. Under the glow, it felt like the camp was under the code-red light of a flare, though Danse's operational instincts weren't enough to pull him out of his gloom.

All around him, the Brotherhood were mobilizing their defences and fortifying the outpost, obviously committed to work all throughout the night in order to have their new headquarters at operational status by morning. It was something he had been proud to be a part of, the way the Brotherhood of Steel worked as one efficient machine, each soldier a valuable link in an unbreakable chain, bound together by oath of blood, loyalty, and honour. No man or woman was taken for granted. Each served their purpose with irreplaceable determination. They bore weight as one. That was what it mean to be a brother or sister.

Burnt and charred structures were being cleared away to be replaced with metal prefabs or sturdy field tents, and the structures that were still standing—huts, crude tents, shacks—were bolstered by sandbags and firewalls of carbon polymer to be repurposed. Guard posts were set at intervals throughout the crossroads where the aisles of domestic huts met and branched out. The bodies of the Dark Bloods were being dragged by the ankles, if they still had them attached to their legs, and away into the darkness of the camp. Most likely to be dumped into a mass grave outside the walls.

The bodies of the fallen Minutemen, however, were gathered with respectful diligence. They were identified and then covered with sheets and laid out in neat rows, ready for burial or incineration, or to be shipped home if Maxson allocated the resources and manpower. Danse hoped they would wait for Ilya to have her say on how their bodies were treated.

He felt himself sinking deeper into his well of depression at the sight of so many lost. It was beginning to tax his body just to walk, and his motions grew lumbering.

He was marched en masse to the south centre of camp, where the battle had left a bloody halo of corpses around the main tent that the Minutemen had defended to the death. The tent was now nothing but a crisp skeleton, only its metal frame remained. Within, the wooden furnishings, and the blackened bodies of the slaves the Brotherhood couldn't get out in time, still crackled as the heat from their fiery demise escaped into the cooling night.

There, Elder Maxson stood at the foot of its smoking corpse, free of his power armour and clad once more in his distinguishing battlecoat. He stared into the debris as the island of officers around him quietly collaborated on logistics, defensive layouts, and personnel distribution. Well, it looked as though he would be bumping into Maxson after all...

Danse wondered what was running through that mind while he stared at the corpses, immobile and indecipherable. _Do you mourn for them, or do their deaths mean nothing to you?_

As they neared, the elder stirred from his introspective stare and turned to receive them. Half of his face was in shadow by the fall of the red night, giving him an ominous, atmospheric menace. His features hardened once he saw what his soldiers brought him.

Like the choicest portion of meat after a hunt.

"Good," he spoke simply, curtly. "Bring him."

Danse was taken in Maxson's wake by two of the soldiers from his escort, each of his arms seized in their metal grips. Suddenly, he cared again. Panic vaulted up his stomach and into his throat, thoughts of escape swarming his head like a hive of bloodbugs, latching on and sucking him dry of his rationality. But his training kicked in within a few steady breaths, allowing him to access his well of rationale. If he broke his cover and made a run for it now, there was no going back. Besides, his chances of actually escaping without catching a shot in the back were next to none.

Maxson lead them to his personal prefabricated quarters, a metal structure that could be unpacked and deconstructed with ease for quick deployments in the field. The concept was similar to an old-fashioned tent, though there was no use for the structural props like the wooden or metal poles used in tents. The foundations and walls were simply clicked and bolted into place, and interior layouts of separate rooms could be designed as anyone saw fit, just by fitting in mobile wall sliders. They were sturdy and ingenious.

Weather-faded orange Brotherhood flags draped over either side of the entrance hatch, giving a rustic feeling as they passed between them, material brushing the top of Danse's helmet. Within, the furnishing setup was similar to the elder's quarters aboard the Prydwen, though a little more crude and makeshift.

As Maxson strolled leisurely across his quarters and then turned to face him, Danse was shoved upon his release by one of the soldiers.

"Enough," the elder scolded coolly. "Leave us."

The soldiers gave their firm salutations, the performance rowdy in their suits, then obediently took their leave back through the swishing flags before sealing the hatch.

Maxson affixed his eyes on Danse like the snap of a whip. And Danse felt it. Steel, did he know who he was? In one stride, Maxson could tear off his helmet and discover him. He would kill him in an instant without an ounce of mercy. Then Ilya would be left alone...

There was a tense respite where both men stared in silence at each other. Measuring.

Amid the fight-or-flight noise inside him, Danse picked out the raging voice that spoke to the other man, _did you hurt her? What will you do to her with me out of the way?_

The elder ceased measuring. He stood phlegmatic and rigid, hands propped behind his back in his formal custom. "Deadskull, was it?"

Danse almost pissed himself with shock. Did he not suspect him? Or did he, and was he just drawing this out? His heartbeat was violent and he prayed it couldn't be heard.

At the silence, Maxson hmphed with apparent disinterest. "Harper stated you earned it in battle. A primitive, yet honourable custom. Though I'm curious what your name was before that."

He could only keep his silence, tensing over the probability that Maxson was toying with his prey, suggesting he knew his name before he earned his battle title. Suggesting he _knew_ him.

"I'll have to query Harper on that, won't I," the elder inferred, and there was a sinister edge on his words as his eyes cut through Danse's visor. Like he was threatening to hurt her.

The exiled paladin unconsciously heightened his chin, only noticing he had done so when Maxson responded by tilting his chin like a piqued predator, as if in some secret, subtle language of head angles. Danse desisted from tightening his fists at his sides.

"What was it she said? That you lost your tongue and your face to raiders? Convenient." His tone was ironical now, and Danse was nearing the breaking point of his cool. If Maxson did decide to drop it with the games, then Danse would be confronted with a gruelling choice. To accept defeat and die with dignity, or fight for his life and attempt to kill Maxson. One would mean to fail Ilya, the other to kill another friend to join Cutler. He was not prepared or willing to do either.

"If Harper was ever to turn on the Brotherhood of Steel, we couldn't use her mute accomplice as an efficient source of insight into her plans," the elder explained his thread of thought at length, as if purposely stretching out the tension. Despite this, there was no hint of quiet satisfaction in his gaze, only the dark, deadly focus of a cat rooting out a mouse. Or in their case, a ruthless psychoanalyst rooting out a synth infiltrator.

Danse refused to waver under Maxson. Here, now, he wasn't the Arthur he had known for many years and formed a bond with over the reuniting of the Outcasts. He was Elder Maxson, loved, feared, and respected supreme commander of the Brotherhood of Steel.

The elder took another sharp measurement of the synth standing before him, seemed to come to some conclusion as he worked his jaw contemplatively, then his bearing eased a fraction, much to Danse's surprise. Now, when he spoke, it was with a controlled frankness. "By now I'm sure you're aware of how many in the Brotherhood of Steel feel about outsiders. If you're to maintain a close guard of Harper, then you're going to need to understand the people she belongs to, and who we are at the core. You'll come across a great deal of cold-shouldering, and even I can't prevent that. You're just going to have to get used to it."

Danse didn't understand what was happening. Was Maxson accepting him? Giving him advice? Giving his blessing to protect Ilya?

"I'm not sure how much Harper has told you of our ways, so I'll be brief.

"We rely on a very literal set of ideals in our cause, and it's only because of those ideals that we've survived as a society from the very beginning of the world's apocalyptic era. Our goal is simple; to protect our future by seeking out and confiscating all forms of technology that could be deemed harmful to the human race. If there is ever another apocalypse, then the Brotherhood has failed. I refuse to let that happen. It's my life's purpose to make sure we succeed, by any means necessary. Do we understand each other?"

The coming death hovering behind his words gave even Danse a thunder of fear. He was asking if he was going to be a hindrance or a threat to his cause. But was he asking Deadskull, or Danse?

He was in a torrent of unknowns right now, not knowing where he stood with Maxson, if his threats were an unspoken message or if he was just being paranoid. He felt as though he was being dangled over a pit of spikes, his captor studying him so finely that a single twitch in reaction would result in his impalement. So caught up in this tangle, Danse almost spoke aloud his acknowledgement. _Understood, Elder._ He managed a steady nod instead.

"Good. Officially, our military is synonymous with our government, but there is a mild contrast between what we consider conservatives and liberals. If you want a history lesson, have Harper take you to our Proctor of the Order of the Quill. He would be pleased to fill you in, I'm sure."

 _Yes, Quinlan always did love to blather on about his endless and unrivalled knowledge,_ Danse thought to himself.

The tiny hint of expression on Maxson's face suggested he thought similar things of the Proctor. "Regardless of what stance people have on how our politics play out, most are disinclined to trust in outside influences. Especially of your nature. I hope you understand."

Danse understood perfectly. He had filled the middle-ground between being open to outsiders aiding the Brotherhood's cause, and outright rejecting their influence. His unfulfilled swaying between Lyons' Brotherhood and his time with the Outcasts embodied that. And after all, if he was to go by his lifetime of possibly false memories, he hadn't been born into the Brotherhood, he had been recruited as a teenager. He never had the right to be fully prejudiced.

Realising that Maxson was waiting for his acknowledgement, Danse nodded again.

"But, don't let my frankness fool you. You're here at my sufferance."

Danse knew the man well enough not to have let his accommodating manner fool him. He preserved his cool, even as Maxson's features darkened.

"If Harper is going to insist on your presence with her at all times, then my concern is not only for the security of the Brotherhood, but that of Harper's. She may trust you, but that means nothing to me." Maxson's boots crunched lightly over sand as he stalked nearer, hands still comfortably behind his back to exude a precise arrogance in his approach. They were of a similar height, Danse being only a fraction taller, and he feared this would be another clue to his identity.

Maxson only came to a halt when his face was mere inches from Danse's visor. Being so near to him again was surreal, and not in a good way. Beneath the weathered and strained visage of his burdened youth, Danse could still identify the young man he had known. But it was but an echo of a thing. A lost thing.

"I'm going to speak very plainly so that you fully comprehend what I'm about to tell you," the elder spoke with a snarl upon his lips, his dark voice stressing every word in meticulous clarity. "If you fail to protect her, you will have me to answer to." His threat polluted what air there was between them before he spoke again. "Is that plain enough for you?"

 _Oh it was plain. So plain that it was opaque,_ Danse's core growled back. _But if you fail to protect her too, then you'll be answering to me in kind._

The staredown held until Maxson found satisfaction in the other man's complete stillness. He didn't give an inch, remained in his draconian leer as he finished with, "You're free to go."

Danse didn't flee at once, despite every instinct screaming at him to do so. Perhaps it was unwise, but his raging testosterone demanded he confront the other man's force in equal measure. He would not cower beneath a threat, but stand and meet it head-on.

They brewed at each other, and the genesis of a rivalry took form.

After holding stoic to Maxson's equally unyielding hold, Danse finally took his leave and unhurriedly stepped outside of the elder's quarters. He wasn't aware of how his adrenaline was pumping through his body until his head was clear of the hostile atmosphere in there.

The guards shadowed him through the camp as he made his way to where the crew had bunkered in. He was suspended in waves of questions and contradictions. Did Maxson know it was him or not? His manner had been cryptic, throwing him in all directions, keeping his cards close to his chest. How close had he just stood before death? Was he now a part of some worldly plan, or just a minor obstacle?

Maxson's agenda with Ilya escaped him. Was this threat of a professional nature to protect an ally, or something of a personal nature? Danse was now more conflicted than ever about the relationship between Maxson and Ilya, and how deep and intricate its layers of complexities went.

Were they enemies or allies? Did they even know the answer to that themselves?

One thing Danse did know, was that if he spent too long trying to wrap his head around it, he would never be able to unwrap his head again.

He almost missed the narrow, rocky pathway to where the guards told him his crew had claimed the spot as theirs.

It was a secluded area at the north-west corner of the camp, sandwiched into a miniature canyon under a protruding outcrop of pancaked rock formations. The team had procured themselves quite the range of field equipment, and were in the midst of pitching several small two-man tents into a circle around a campfire. A netting canopy had been stretched overhead, secured to the rock outcrop with metal pins.

MacCready was up there weaving grassy shrubs and dirty rags through it to shade the area from the coming sun and sand. Deacon was down below tossing up more materials when needed. The others were scattered around tending to other preparations.

"No, no, no. See, I tagged him first before you even got your shot off," Deacon was drabbling on as he practised spinning a rag to then flick out as a whip. "Note the rail spike through the noggin."

"That's bullcrap," MacCready protested from above. "I remember seeing my shot land, boom, right in the chest, before your spike even touched him."

"So it wasn't even a headshot? That automatically means the kill was mine. The game was: who got the most headshots."

"Well then, smart-butt, landing headshots on dead guys doesn't count!"

Deacon's laugh trailed off awkwardly. "...You really need to drop the whole 'no swearing' thing, Mac. You're embarrassing me."

Danse never heard MacCready's response, because he was shoved so harshly from behind that it floored him in a spattering of sand. He trapped his grunt behind his teeth, but it hardly mattered, the soldiers wouldn't have heard it to recognise his voice because the crew sounded as though they all shouted out simultaneously.

Cait's boots were the first to reach him and she aided him up. "You fucken' pricks! Was that really needed? Go skulk somewhere else, would ya? Go on, fuck off with ya!"

Multiple boots encircled Danse's landing zone, and he quickly realised he was surrounded by his small team, their vanguard formation blocking the Brotherhood soldiers in his defence. Even Dogmeat had sprung to his defence and was posted before him, growling viciously. The soldiers didn't bother with a response. They just turned and stomped away.

"Pricks," Cait spat again as she brushed sand off Danse's shoulders. "You alright, laddie?"

Danse also didn't bother with a response. He was passed being angered. He just longed for a hole and some shut-eye. In his case, a system shutdown. Did synths actually sleep, or just mimic sleeping? On second thought, he didn't care.

Nick deployed a searching look on him. "We saw them cart you away when the vertibird landed. Let me guess, Maxson's doing?"

"Maxson's doing," Danse confirmed tonelessly.

"Jesus," MacCready exclaimed, having leapt down from the canopy the moment Danse hit the dirt. "That could have gone to hell in a heartbeat. What the heck did he want with you?"

"To talk. Nothing more." Over talking about it, Danse began to move his way out from their circle, moving around Clay-Crawler in his power armour who ogled him with sad eyes. He needed time to decompress and sift through his thoughts.

"Did they hurt you?" Nick added another question from behind.

"No."

There were no more questions as he pushed inside the nearest tent, uncaring if it had been claimed by anyone. He pulled off his helmet. Inspected it. Dropped it carelessly. Removed his weaponry and utilities. Placed them down with half the care he usually would against a sack of essentials near the entrance flap. Ripped off the straps keeping his armour kit in place. Pulled it all way. Dropped everything at the foot of the sleeping roll. Tugged off his sweat-stained shirt. Tossed it back at something that sounded like it fell over. Didn't care. Dropped down on the sleeping roll to unbuckle his combat boots and pull them off. Ran his hands back through his hair, grabbing a handful for a second before loosing a resigned sighed.

He was thirsty. Hungry. He hadn't eaten since that morning. Realised he didn't care. All he craved right now was sensory deprivation.

The damp bandages over the laser burn to his shoulder needed redressing, and so did the one where the yao guai had bitten his forearm on his run to the bunker. A stimpak would suffice. They were well on the mend anyway and the bandages were only still there because of Ilya's insistence to keep the wounds clean.

Danse tore both of them off, checked the tender flesh of both before pricking himself with a stimpak, then lay back above the covers and stared vacantly up at the tapered point at the top of the tent. The ever-vigilant spotlights of the Prydwen flashed through the cracks in the canopy overhead.

He hoped that Ilya was safe up there. Maxson needn't worry about following through with his threat. If anything happened to her, his life would be forfeit by his own hand before Maxson ever got the chance.

That was Danse's last thought before he turned over and shut down.

* * *

 **A/N:** This episode proudly brought to you by angst and testosterone.

So one of my amazing readers here, Aymee111, made this badass fanart depiction of the creature 'Deadskull,' and I had to share it with everyone! She did such a great job of recreating it and it gave me the biggest smile just to have someone be so inspired by my work. I even have it set on my desktop background :P Because FF won't allow outgoing links, jump over to AO3 with the link provided in my profile on here, and I've linked her artwork beneath this chapter over there.

Thanks again, Aymee!

To any other artists out there, if you ever want to make something based off Fury Blood then please go ahead, I would love that!


	70. Sound of Silence

**Sound of Silence**

* * *

 _Ilya was cold, a state of limbo locking her frozen._

 _No, not back here. Please not here._

 _A nimbus of crystallized air danced with her fingers as she spread them across the glass on her pod, frost falling away to reveal the darkest niche of her memories._

 _The vault. Where it all began anew. The events within frozen over and distant to her, but one glimpse was all she needed to remember in lucid, raw grief. Crystallized grief._

 _She was forced to witness it all over again. But now, her mind was fractured, one part of her watching the shattering of her family with wrenching trauma, numb fists beating on the glass and screams tearing out uselessly. But the other part of her watched on in silence. Crystallized silence._

 _The ghost of her memory faded into cold darkness, grasping her into an eternal misery._

 _There, the war scorched the earth before her eyes, the people cried out for their gods, and she stood powerless in witness as it washed on forever. Echoing in her limbo._

 _Echoing..._

 _Echoes of nuclear fire. Echoes of the vast wastes. Echoes of the lost._

 _Her eternal limbo was cold, lonely, despairing, but as eternity's echoes grew on, the echoes in her grew into burning fury._

 _And then, one day, she wasn't eternal. The frozen ghost broke free. She fractured once again upon her freedom, one part wrought with delirium, rushing to her dead husband, weeping for his soul, grasping for sentimental mementos, avowing her love and promising to put his soul at rest with the return of their son._

 _But the other part of her stood aflame with a taste for vengeance, walked the vault in soft fury, ignoring all around her as she seized her first steps out into the wasteland. She was fury walking._

 _Maiming and slaying, she cut a bloody path to vengeance, Kellogg's dead face forever etched into her memories to remind her there was no escaping the pain of loss. Only a lie in respite, like the dull edge of a blade before it was thrust in deep._

 _Nate and Shaun were still lost. The world and all its souls were still lost. She was still lost._

 _The taste of vengeance bled off into nuclear dust. That dust swirled into fiery sand, giving way to a desert wasteland dripping with radioactive remnants of the war she had witnessed. Following her until the end of her mortal days._

 _In that desert spanned an endless field of men and women. All Minutemen. All silent. All dead._

 _Ilya stepped through sand on fire, the bare soles of her feet catching up the flames and burning in painless agony. The bodies of the men and women lay face down, as if drowned in sand. Fearfully, she lowered and turned the nearest body of a woman. Her sightless eyes stared up at Ilya. Cold, glazed. Then her mouth split in a pantomime of screaming agony._

 _Ilya fell back, pushing and paddling away as all of the dead came to life in silent screams. They rolled over in her direction and folded their limbs beneath themselves to begin standing. Some were headless. Some were missing limbs, some dangling by threads of sinew. Most were riddled with bullet bites and blade piercings._

 _Guilt and fear collided in her. They deserved their vengeance on her, but she feared their vengeance all the same. The sand became a thick sludge as she crawled away from the shuffling dead. It clung to her like clay, latching onto her limbs and gluing them down. Swallowing her under. Denying her escape._

 _Nearer and nearer the shuffling came, and she struggled through the clay in vain, her breath burning out her throat with the strain. She was so submerged in the sticky clay now that she couldn't even turn to see how close they were._

 _Then hands were on her. Many hands. Muddy and vile. Clawing and groping. They grew up from the clay and stole her down deeper, covering her mouth to block her screams before she was fully submerged._

 _The red clay morphed to the black of oil. Raiders cackled in her ears as they tore the clothing from her body, baring her open to infest her with their barbaric desires. She screamed in silence. But the more she screamed, the more the hands infested her. Her blood was drawn as her skin was slowly shredded. Pain peaked with the height of her screams, only earning her deeper infestations._

 _The force was piercing. It went on and on. Until more blood was drawn from her shredded core. It seeped out into the oil and infused it like an evil mist, commingling into the dark blood._

 _There Ilya was forced to witness, under agony of violation, as Danse stood in a grotto of dark thunderclouds. He was rigid, unmoving, silent, his face darkened by his murky nimbus and befallen by depressive shadow. His eyes were empty, unfocused into distant torment. His hand cradled his laser pistol._

" _Danse," Ilya tried to call to him, but her words were soundless. "Danse, I'm here. Just look at me."_

 _Silence._

" _Please look at me, Danse. You're not alone. You're not a machine. You're not nothing. Please hear me."_

 _Silence._

" _Please, Danse." Beset by sobs, her voice was lost to the vacuity of the dark blood with her pained cries of defilement. "Please... I love you."_

 _He was beyond her reach. She fractured upon watching as he willingly dropped to his knees before Maxson, an old rusty combat knife moving to rest beneath his throat._

 _Ilya cried a tirade in horror. Cried mercy for Danse. Cried curses for Maxson. Cried until her soul bled with her body. But her cries were silent, a litany of unheard sounds lost in a sea of her own blood._

 _The knife streaked. Maxson tore the steel through Danse's surrendered flesh, letting his dying body slump to its fate._

 _Ilya felt it like a streak to her own throat. Fractured, one of her raved out a tide of screams, her fury like nothing unleashed before. The other her lost tears to silent weeps, broken._

 _Sad eyes. Angry eyes_ _—_ _the prophets foretold._

 _The last of her blood poured out as air rejected her lungs. But she didn't resist the suffering in her. She welcomed it. For it was a reverie from the pain of loss._

 _Then Maxson held aloft his laser pistol. Pressed the muzzle into his temple. Offered a sweet vengeance to her fury._

" _I'm sorry," his voice echoed. A secret sincerity only she knew of. "I never wanted to walk this path. But it's too late for me. Don't let the same darkness consume you."_

 _Ilya was gathering her breath to scream her wrath at him, reject his apology and his excuse for becoming a monster. But when he turned his face into the light, he wasn't Maxson. He was Danse._

" _I'm just a machine. And a machine can't love."_

 _He pulled the trigger._

 _There was nothing left of Ilya to scream with. Everything in her began to perish as the Red Menace stalked over the Dark Blood Sea. Fire from the skies burned up the oil in the sea, creating a swaying wasteland of flames. It spread and gave birth to another apocalypse, eclipsing the world like the fall of the moon behind the great shadow of the sun._

 _Radiation reigned in the wake of the dead world. It haunted the step of the frozen ghost as she walked the earth alone. For an eternity she lingered, a lone wanderer, a sole survivor. Her frozen grief crystallized the firestorm until the world was a barren wasteland once more._

 _Until one day, she returned to her son. An infant in the sand, an innocent lost in the world, a victim of his environment. Taking him into her hands, the frozen ghost felt herself warm as a tear melted down her cheek, dropping a world of herself onto his smiling cheek._

 _Baby Shaun reached for his mother, touched the icicles of her melting hair and pulled at it in curiosity once it had melted completely. She felt herself smiling down on him, no longer frozen._

 _The arms of her husband settled around her to cradle their son together, his familiar fingers interlacing hers. Suddenly, Ilya was home again. Back before the war, when her life was whole and full of promise. There was hope for the future. Her house looked exactly the same as when she'd left it to flee from the bombs. She hadn't set foot in the house since._

" _Hi, honey," Nate whispered warmly in her ear. The sound of his voice summoned tears from her, and his lips pressed a loving kiss on her cheek, tending to the tear there._

" _Listen," Nate began, melding his cheek against hers. "I don't think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a mother you are... but we're going to anyway."_

 _Ilya knew those words. Had collapsed with grief outside the remains of their home listening to them. She couldn't listen to them again. Couldn't, couldn't, couldn't._

 _But Shaun began to coo and mumble in their arms, smiling up at his mother and father, enthralled in bliss at the sound of his father's voice and emotion in his mother's eyes._

" _You are kind, and loving..." Nate said, and Shaun was caught in a soft wave of giggles from the blue of his innocent little mind. "...and funny. That's right," Nate agreed with his son, chuckling softly with him. "And patient. So patient. Patience of a saint, as your mother used to say."_

 _Tears were escaping Ilya's eyes in a steady river down her cheeks, but she was frozen once more in her dead husband's arms, gazing wistfully on her lost son._

" _Look, with Shaun, and us all being at home together... It's been an amazing year. But even so, I know our best days are yet to come. There will be changes, sure. Things we'll need to adjust to. You'll rejoin the civilian workforce. I'll shake the dust off my law degree. But everything we do, no matter how hard...we do it for our family."_

 _Shaun burbled and popped a bubble on his little plump mouth as if in agreement, and Ilya choked on a sob. Nate, her beloved Nate, kissed her cheek again to console her. He was so warm. So real._

" _Now say goodbye, Shaun..." The baby gurgled more, making more bubbles with his saliva. "Bye-bye?" Nate tried again, amused. "Say bye-bye?" Shaun just giggled at his father's hopeful face, and Nate smiled against his wife's wet cheek._

" _Bye, honey. We love you."_

* * *

"No! Don't go!"

The brittle cold of night slapped Ilya's hot skin as she shot up from sleep, air crashing in and out of her lungs as she shouted for Nate and Shaun.

"Please don't go," she whimpered, fingers groping through the damp sheets for stability. "I still love you both."

She was frozen once more. Trapped aloft in icy nightmares. Gushing backwards. Losing grip of Shaun. Pulled from Nate. Cascading through another apocalypse. Feeling Danse's suicide rip her heart out and then rewinding through Maxson killing him in cold blood. The hands defiling her. The dark blood drowning her. The massacre of her Minutemen. Her revenge on Kellogg, only burying her deeper into her dark, bilious void. Walking the ruins of her old world. Killing all in her way. The Great War. Nate and Shaun. The vault. That damned cryopod.

Ilya's mind twisted inside out like a skinned snake, and she screamed for Danse this time. Wrapped herself tight and cried out for the extra layer of his embrace.

But he wasn't there. Was he dead? Had Maxson killed him that night outside the bunker? Had he taken his own life out of shame and dishonour? So wound in her disorientation, Ilya's head was rambling endlessly at her, flashing the nightmare back onto her like it was trying to drag her back in. One of her knew this, recognised it, resisted it. The other her was lost to it, addicted to it.

"I'm going insane," she mewled into her quivering hands, bowing her drenched face into them and rocking in place. "I'm going insane. I'm going insane. I'm going fucking insane."

Her own gasps were heard from a damp distance, until piece by piece she was whole again. On her bed. In her quarters. On the Prydwen. In the Bloodlands. In the future.

"...Danse?" Drawing her face up from her hands, she swept the room. He was gone. He left without waking her. Had he gotten off the ship safely? What if he'd slipped up and blown his cover? What if the Brotherhood had taken matters into their own hands and had taken him for interrogation? What if they had murdered him?

Fear manifested in her quickened breath. Ilya slipped a shaky leg away from the knot of her body and over the side of the bed, then the other, attempting to stand but needing to grab at the wall for aid. She was sweating bullets, shivering with cold and trauma, weak and dazed with delirium and exhaustion, but she still tumbled her way across the room to the hatch.

Her fingers were partially numb— _frozen, crystallized grief_ —struggling to wind open the hatch and push it on its heavy hinges. The Prydwen was asleep, her bowels dark and gloomy, but the heavy trod of power armour resounded. Night patrols.

Ilya placed one foot out from her quarters and was blocked by a guard from the right flank of her hatchway. "Ma'am... are you well? It sounded like you were having a nightmare in there. By order of Elder Maxson, you've been confined to your quarters during lights-out, but I have orders to escort you anywhere you wish to go aboard the ship, save for the flight deck."

Damn you, Maxson. Damn you, damn you, damn you to hell. Ilya had only heard the gist of what the soldier had said. She was too preoccupied with finding Danse.

It was only when she became aware of the soldier clasping at her arms in an effort to bring her blind wander under control that she focused on him.

"Ma'am! Please, calm down. It was just a nightmare. Just take a deep breath and relax."

She braced herself on his arms like a deranged madwoman and sucked up more air for her winded lungs. "My bodyguard," she wheezed. "Where is he?"

The guard looked over her harried condition with a concerned frown. "The one they call Deadskull, right? From what I heard, he was taken back down to camp by Knight-Sergeant Muller and Knight Rhys. They had some things to say, but I think he got out of here in one piece, if that's what you're worried about."

The tension that fled her chest was like a rinsing of cool air. Seeing her finally relax, the soldier released her to lean back against her doorway. She rested her head back on the wall for a moment to collect herself, breathing, letting the arid air inside the ship dry her sweat-laden skin. Why couldn't Danse have just woken her? Why did he have to risk himself like that? The numbskull. The fucking idiot numbskull. God she loved him.

"You don't look too good, ma'am. Do you need to visit the medbay?" the guard persisted.

Ilya blanked him. "Is Maxson back aboard?"

"No, Elder Maxson is still down in Camp Lex Talionis."

With her face pinched in anger, Ilya checked the time on her Pip-Boy. It was 2am. What the hell was he still doing down there that his officers couldn't? She aired her frustration with a sigh. "Fuck me... So what's this Lex Talionis mean then?" she asked as if biting the bullet of curiosity.

"It's Old-World Latin for 'eye for an eye,' ma'am. At least that's what Captain Kells told us. We're calling it Camp Talion for short."

The law of talion, Ilya mused. Could Maxson have named it that with the intention of seeking revenge for the Minutemen massacre? Or was that just wishful thinking...

"You sure you're all right?"

Ilya hadn't noticed how wretched she felt until he brought it up. "I need some air."

"I'll take you to the forecastle."

The guard was patient with her slow, shivering steps. She wrapped her leather duster tighter around her body as she stepped out into the chilly desert winds. It was a sharp contrast to the blazing heat of the daytime.

She waited for the sound of the hatch behind her closing, but it never came. Turning her head, she saw the guard just standing in the hatchway silently watching her.

"...Do you mind?"

He shook his head blandly. "Sorry, ma'am. I have orders from the elder not to leave you alone near the edges."

She registered that through a disbelieving blink. "You seriously think I'm gonna jump overboard? If I wanted to kill myself, I'd have cut my wrists or shot myself in the head in my quarters."

"Orders are orders, ma'am."

Snarling a sigh, Ilya approached the guard rail and gazed back out on the quiet savagery of the land, collecting a heavy dose of oxygen. The night seemed darker on second glance, as if conspiring to shroud monsters within. She couldn't even imagine what other hideously mutated creatures lay out there for her to discover. Both beasts and raiders alike.

The Red Menace seemed to have completed its retreat; the air was crisp and clear without a red cloud in sight. The fiery cast of the oil wells bled brightly into the night like godly torches, scattered across the desert span in great distances. It painted a clear picture of how wide-spread these raider clans were.

Remembering the Rad Land map markers Maxson had installed on her Pip-Boy, way back when she had been tasked with finding and extracting Danse, Ilya flicked onto its display and roughly compared. Straight ahead south, between the higher ridges of land where the Brotherhood had swept over the border camps, was a valley they had called No Man's Delta. Scouts must have found a water source, or at least traces of water. Lex Talionis rested at the foot of the delta before the ridge began to dip. With luck, they could extract water from a nearby basin instead of having it shipped in from the Commonwealth.

No doubt her map would need updating. Her fingers worked to edit the conquered **Forward Raider Outpost** to **Camp: Lex Talionis.** Brotherhood – 1. Dark Bloods – 0.

Ilya raised her gaze back out to the war-torn landscape with a slow, meditative sigh. The wreckage of the other various border camps the Brotherhood had liberated seemed to sigh with her, their breaths of dark, oily smoke that roiled into the night.

How many innocents had died in those camps? How many had died during their liberation? The war in her time drifted over her.

 _One second, a stray bullet, a life lost._

 _Fallen fields, fallen victims._

 _Airborne, gliding to the next battle, over a mass grave of the innocent dead._

 _Grazing memories of a couple dead in arms._

 _The chilling calls of an abandoned child._

 _The cold sorrow of a dead infant._

 _Hollow, haunted, sleepless nights._

 _Then, everything, everyone, dead. A world, a husband, a son._

 _Dead and gone,_

 _But haunting._

The lure of war was seductive. It took root in the minds of those with power and once it set its whispers in deep, promising nobility and heroism, righteousness and salvation, glory and honour, it was set in motion, spinning on its axis, feeding itself boundlessly, spinning and spinning faster and faster until it was a thing that breathed and moved on its own. Men were but slaves to its lusty desire. And their blood was its food.

Ilya had been lured. Just as Maxson had. They could fool themselves into thinking they were the powers that be. But they weren't. There was no going back now, no bringing back the dead.

She replayed the blurry gloss of battle in her head, trying to pinpoint where she had gone wrong. What would Danse have done differently to prevent such a massacre? He may doubt himself and his leadership capabilities ever since losing his Recon Squad Gladius, but he would never cease to inspire Ilya. If only he had been here instead of her. He might have been able to prevent it all.

She thought, with a sudden shard of pain, of the families of the fallen Minutemen, and those of the ones taken into slavery. All of them waiting back in the Commonwealth, hoping their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers would come home again.

Seeking a desperate escape from the guilt, Ilya sank her gaze down into the bustling camp beneath the Prydwen. _Where are you down there, Danse? Are you sleeping? Are you dreaming? Or are your nightmares haunting you, too?_

She yearned for him so much her throat constricted. There was no telling how long it would be until she could see him again. How long would Maxson keep her cooped up here, like some precious but useless artifact who had outlived her value?

Fuck. Why did she fall asleep so suddenly? She should have made the most of the time she had with him. Absently, her hand flew to the space at her chest where his holotags had once hung. But they were lost. More guilt hung from her instead.

As if to torment her for it, her eye caught on a dark silhouette down in the camp, where one of the ship's spotlights had grazed over. Ilya blinked and frowned, staring hard at that same spot. She was tired. Hallucinating.

The spotlight rotated back over the spot again. The silhouette flashed again. A still man. Just standing, staring. No, she was losing her mind.

Ilya shivered as feelers of fear took hold. An eerie sensation that she couldn't explain prickled the skin of her back and induced her feet to take backward steps from the railings. When she spun back to the exit, the guard saw the fear in her eyes.

"Ma'am? Is everything alright?"

"I'm done. I want to go back inside."

"Yes, ma'am. Do you need me to take you anywhere else? To the galley, or the shower block?"

She had just wanted to flee back to her quarters, but the idea of a hot shower overrode her mind. The guard escorted her and then thankfully gave her some privacy while she stripped off her ripped and sullied uniform and tip-toed into a cubicle. She needed to rid herself of this blood and dust like she needed to rid herself of the battle.

The sludge rolled away from her skin under the water. She still scrubbed at her breasts with a soapy cloth. Scrubbing off the stain of their dirty hands. Scrubbing until her skin was pink and raw. She didn't focus on the myriad of cuts and bruises. Easier to pretend they weren't there. Her wet hair clung to her in an enfolding canopy, where she hid her tears from the eyes of her ghosts. She wept quietly on the floor of the shower until the water timed out and ran dry.

With legs still trembling, Ilya made her way back to her quarters in a fresh uniform jumpsuit, officer's black issue. Though she was vacant of the pride she once felt wearing it.

"You sure you don't want to eat something?" the guard pressed, having already tried several times now. "I was told you hadn't eaten anything since boarding."

She hadn't eaten anything since... she couldn't remember. Danse had tried to get her to eat a field ration during the flight back from her rescue, some protein bar, but she had refused.

Ilya shook her head. She craved the filling sustenance of food, but was repulsed by the thought of it at the same time. Besides, why should she eat her fill when so many others needed it more? _Deserved_ it more?

"My bodyguard," Ilya diverted as she reached her hatch. "Can I send for him in the morning?"

The guard considered this for a moment before coming to a repentant shrug. "You'll have to clear it with either the captain or the elder, ma'am. I wasn't given instructions on who you were allowed to contact, but the elder did leave me with specific instructions not to let you bring your bodyguard aboard without his permission."

Apparently she was a wicked enchantress and could sweet-talk her way off the ship. There was no way of knowing if Maxson suspected Danse, but there was no denying he was suspicious of him in general. He seemed to take a strong disliking to anyone that was close to her. Possessiveness, or just simple animosity for any of her associates?

"Do you know when he'll be back aboard?"

Again with the repentant shrug. "No, sorry, ma'am. He may be pulling an all-nighter to make sure the camp is ready for the morning ops."

"Morning ops?"

"Need-to-know basis. Again, sorry. I'm sure the elder will fill you in on the details before it all goes down."

"Mhm."

Was Maxson waiting out her rage, too scared to approach while her grief was still fresh and deadly? Considering the bruising to his broken nose, he had obviously learnt from her last rage. Good boy.

The guard was eyeing her suspiciously while she phased into her dark thoughts. "You sure you're alright, Harper?" It was the first time he had addressed her by name. Pulling out the big guns.

"Yup." She sealed the hatch behind her before he could stop her and rested heavily against it, hearing an _...ok then,_ from the other side. She didn't like the reality of both Danse and Maxson being down in the camp while she was stuck up on the ship. But if Maxson suspected him, he wouldn't have been allowed to leave the Prydwen... unless Maxson planned to take him out into the desert, shoot him, and leave him out there to rot. If the secret of his mercy to Danse, a branded synth traitor, got out...

 _Fuck._ Her heart was pattering again with anxiety. She felt like a caged animal, losing her mind to isolation, at the mercy of herself. The nightmare stole back in on her consciousness and she shivered remembering the hands all over her, the fields of dead soldiers, losing those closest to her.

She felt winded again, breathless, and now hot, her skin stinging mildly. The radiation warning on her Pip-Boy crackled and her stomach dropped. Glancing at the meter showed there was no radiation. It was all in her head.

Yet she could hear it. Feel it. _Feel it_ damn it.

The night crept in to suffocate her. The Red Menace haunting her, drifting up from the floors to crawl up her back and pervade her insides. And she saw it. The shadowy figure in the corner, just standing there, watching her. Waiting for her.

In the darkest part of the night, her demons came out to play.

A cloudburst of misery and fear spilled from Ilya's eyes as she slid down to the floor, letting her demons slither closer. Let them. She cinched her eyes shut, a flow of tears squeezing out. Let them consume her.

" _Madness,"_ she heard Doom-Guy's noxious voice fill her ears. _"_ _There is comfort in it. Yes? A place to hide. A thing that knows you. A thing that speaks to you. Your own world, inside yourself."_

Her eyes shot open to the shadowed figure, but it hadn't moved. Doom-Guy's voice didn't come from him.

" _Can't hide from Red Menace."_

She squeezed her eyes shut again in terror. It was under the threat of the radiation that her mind did the wanders of its freewill. So much was germinating in there, she couldn't keep it from wandering into forbidden alleys.

She missed Jet.

 _You're still just a junkie deep down._

The dark presence in her made its comeback with snide truth. Even still, Ilya tussled with it, shaking her head to her own thoughts, curling down on the floor and bringing her legs to her chest to enwrap herself tight.

 _No. I don't need Jet._

 _It was always there for you. It made everything better. Made_ you _better. You need it._

She bared her teeth and raked her fingers up into her hair, shaking her head with reinforced tenacity.

 _Fight it. Fight it._

 _Why fight it? It will always be there. It can get you through this. Lay waste to your demons. Make you as powerful as Maxson. Make you a dead woman walking. It's the only way you can survive._

Her fingers pressed in, the exertion causing her arms to quiver on either side of her temples, and her internal baring thwarted the voice of the presence until all she could hear was the straining of her eardrums. It was like being underwater. Muted and peaceful.

 _Think of Danse. He's the only way I can survive._

She thought of his eyes and how she could so easily get lost in them, of his voice and how it made her shiver and melt all at once, of his smile and how it warmed her heart and forced her to smile back, of his presence, how it soothed and steadied her. But mostly, she thought of his heart, how pure and loyal, selfless and dedicated it was.

Time graced her in an illusion, and Ilya found herself slipping in and out of consciousness on the floor. Morning was an empty notion, one that would never come. But right there, on the floor smothered in the dark of her mind, Ilya was content to stay hidden from the world. If only she could hide from it with Danse at her side.

"It's always him. You never think of me any more."

Full consciousness snapped and Ilya's head shot up to where the dark silhouette hovered in the corner. It moved. _He_ moved. Out of the shadows.

"Nate?"

A sad smile graced her dead husband's face. He looked exactly the same the last day she saw him. He even wore the Vault 111 jumpsuit. The jumpsuit he died in.

"Nate?" Ilya repeated, voice lilting with repressed emotion. "It's been you this whole time?"

"Shh," he soothed on approach, kneeling down to her as she tried to prop herself up. When they were at eye level, his hand reached out to touch her face. She could feel his fingers on her skin. They were real. He was real.

"Hi, honey," Nate spoke gently, his smile waning as his wife succumbed to tears. "We've missed you."

Ilya searched his gentle eyes desperately. "Shaun?" she managed. "But he's alive. I found him, Nate. I promised you I would."

Nate maintained his smile and continued to stroke at her face, nodding with her. "I know you did. I knew you'd find him. But he'll be here with me soon."

Her head shook through the tears with confusion. "What do you mean?" When he said nothing, only shushing her, she grew frantic. "Nate, what does that mean? Is Shaun in danger?"

"You can't save him, honey. Just like you couldn't save me. But don't worry. Soon, we'll all be together again. Just the three of us. Just like before."

"Nate... I miss you so much. I love you."

"I love you, too." His hand dropped away from her skin and his smile fell away in a slow gradient. "But you can't be with us if you're with him."

Ilya felt her heart crack like a stone dropped from a great height. It took her a moment to respond. "Danse?"

Nate fed her a sad nod. "He's a machine, honey. He can't love you. Not like I do."

"He's not a machine, Nate. And I don't care if he doesn't love me back. _I_ love him."

"More than you love me?"

Those words split her in pieces. Did she love Danse more than Nate? It was a question she never wanted to face, never wanted to answer. But the imploring look in her dead husband's eyes compelled her to speak.

"I'll always love you, Nate. You'll always be a part of me and I'll never let us go. I promise. But I love Danse too. I need him, and he needs me."

"What about what I need?"

The pieces of her split apart further, and she tried to reach for Nate's face. Her fingers fell through him. "Nate, please. Let me touch you."

But he moved away. Stood. Scowled through his sadness as she gazed up at him pleadingly. "If you loved me more than him, you would bring me back. You would go back to the vault, and bring me back with one of those specimens. Then, together we could find Shaun and bring him home. Then everything will stop, honey. Everything. I told you not to go to war. But you went anyway. Left Shaun and I behind. If you stay with Danse, you'll lose Shaun and I."

"Please, Nate. I love you."

"But you love him more."

There were no words she could muster as she watched her husband turn and walk back into the shadows, his silhouette limned in oily darkness. The radiation crept up around her and she shrivelled into sobs.

It ate at the pieces that fell from her. Greedily feeding off her broken whole. And it would have consumed her to oblivion if she hadn't reached for the jet she kept at the pit of her field pack.

And then, all was silent.

* * *

 **A/N:** The chapter name was inspired by Sound of Silence by Disturbed. If you haven't listened to it before, what the hell are you doing with your life? Just go do it now. And prepare your ears for many eargasms. They are one of my favourite bands, and this song is such an outcast from their typical music but its my fav of theirs.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years, and enjoyed the holidays! I work in hospo and we're robots so we don't get time off. Still salty about it... :(

Anyway, thanks for another year of your solid support, you guys are what's keeping this going! Hard to believe I've been writing this for over two years now...


	71. By a Campfire on the Trail

**By a Campfire on the Trail**

* * *

The severance of the storm clouds gave permission to the sun to blare down on the desert. Danse was stirred awake by the clatter from beyond his tent walls. He was still covered in yesterday's filth, and took the time to wipe at the sweat on his face and wash at his body with a wet cloth before stuffing his helmet on and poking his head out of the tent flap.

It was a pale yellow morning. The air was dry in the passing of the storm, meaning it was going to be a scorcher of a day. He ducked back inside to dress and suit up. A shirtless man with a helmet on would be an odd sight.

If he was honest with himself, he would much rather just lie in the tent all day and hibernate from reality. The tent could very easily serve as his private sanctum, and memories of the bunker flushed back to him. But then the slim possibility of seeing Ilya, even just glimpsing her, drove him out from his sanctum and into full daylight.

Most of the others were already up and about, loitering around their secluded camp. Dogmeat was the first to greet Danse, trotting over with his ears tucked back and tail fanning between his legs in timid excitement. When Danse bent to pat along his fur, the canine pawed up on him to nose at his helmet, smelling his familiar scent but unable to understand why his face was hidden. Danse murmured quiet words of reassurance until the dog settled down and followed on his heel.

"Morning sunshine," Hancock chimed from the dim campfire. He was armed with a metal rod and was poking at the kindling, encouraging flames to lick up at the pot propped over it. Both Deacon and MacCready were sat nearby, while Preston leaned back against a crate of munitions. All four were sipping at cigarette stubs, pale smoke wafting lazily in the still wind.

"These crates are full of the compensation Paladin Svensson promised us for rescuing Ilya," Preston let Danse know as he neared. "It's a pretty generous stock. Munitions, meds, construction materials. Even a field workbench for weapon and armour modifications. The guy really set us up."

"Svensson is a good man. I served with him a couple times." Danse scoured over the wooden crates and barrels with approval. Were they barrels of beer? Outstanding. They would be needed before this war was through.

"Good to know we got one of the good guys lookin' out for us, then," Hancock said. "The girls are doing some scavving around the outside of the base for any interesting ingredients to add to the breakfast menu. So far, it's squirrel stew with your choice of a side of slightly moldy and irradiated corn or, you guessed it, crispy squirrel on a stick. What's your preference?"

Neither sounded appealing to Danse. He was more curious about who exactly 'the girls' were, since Cait was the only female among them right now. Unless Ilya was back in camp. He stood expectantly at the campfire.

"Don't worry, feel free to take your helmet off and talk your heart out here," the ghoul said nonchalantly. "Richter has a short-range radio and has the entrance to our little niche under guard so we'll know if the Brotherhood are spying on us. That's what we're calling it, by-the-way. The Niche. Cute, huh? Deacon came up with it."

The spy raised his hand to collect the credit, blowing out a stream of smoke.

"I still like my idea of Butt-Crack Canyon better," MacCready snickered, shrugging in a mock snot.

Danse didn't really care what they were calling their space. He reluctantly reached up to pull his stifling helmet away, breathed in the fresh air, then scanned around. Who was missing? Nick, Cait, and Clay-Crawler. "Where are the others?" he asked.

Hancock gave the stew a bored stir. "Like I said, the girls are out foraging for more ingredients, 'cause this squirrel seriously tastes like ass, and Nick? He said he was gonna talk with Richter about when to go back for the rest of the crew, and enlisting the help of the Children of Atom. Said he had connections in Far Harbour."

So by 'the girls' Danse realised Hancock meant Cait and Clay-Crawler. His hopes of it being Ilya were dashed and sent crashing in flames.

After an awkward silence between the group of men, Danse gave in and settled down in the sand with them around the morning campfire. "...Any sign of her?" he dangled the question out for anyone to grab.

They all shook their heads gravely.

"How was she?" Deacon muttered after a while. A note of care caught on his tone.

"Soldiering on, as she always does." They nodded, but Danse turned his gaze down on his hands, wringing them, staring at leftover bloodstains from the battle, packed with dirt under his fingernails. "But I'm worried she's repressing everything." _Just like I am._

More nods. Not one of them knew how to open a discussion on her emotional state or the raw events of the day before. Ilya's too-narrow brush with death and the loss of the Minutemen. They were all feeling it. The infusion of shock, failure, and mourning. Danse recognised the atmosphere too well. It was like Gladius squad all over again, each time they lost a brother. He covertly watched Preston from beneath his brow. The young Minuteman would be feeling it the hardest.

"...So here we are," Deacon spoke up, forcing comic relief on the awkwardness. "Just soaking in the moment. Nice..." He scratched behind his ear. "The weather today. Yeah. It's hot."

A sigh came from Preston's way, tuned by the mood of yesterday, but he surprised Danse by lifting his shoulders with optimism. "At least it's not raining."

"You did not just say that, Garvey."

Danse nodded agreement with Deacon, but for differing reasons. "Watch what you say here. This place likes to rain acid."

All four looked at him in unpleasant surprise, and Danse realised they knew next to nothing of what this land was capable of. They hadn't even witnessed the Red Menace in its full wrath yet. Yesterday's radstorm was a mere offspring.

Deacon clicked his tongue at him in irritation. "Well you could've mentioned that in the brochure, Danse."

"Would it have stopped you from coming along?" It was half a question, half a mock.

"... Would you shoot me if I said yes?"

"Yes."

Deacon scoffed lightly. "Then no."

The ball had been rolled, even if it was rolling over tragedy. Puffs of cigarette smoke mingled with the rising scent of squirrel stew as the men quietly sat, bonding oafishly. The camp beyond their Niche was still buzzing with the sounds of activity, and Danse wondered what the Brotherhood had planned for day two of the war. Hopefully a recon squadron had been sent out to track the Minutemen taken as slaves so a rescue mission could get underway. He pained to think of the men and women he had worked with and what they were enduring right that moment.

"You smoke, Deadskull?" Hancock asked, offering out a fresh, makeshift roll. He appeared genuine.

"No. I did when I was a kid," Danse replied, then faltered and jerked up one shoulder. "If those memories can be trusted, that is."

"Explains the deep voice Ilya gets goosebumps over."

Danse domed a quizzical brow up at the ghoul, who just grinned without meeting his eye. "But I haven't since joining the Brotherhood," Danse added after a shrug.

"Ah," Hancock came to his own conclusion with a nod, stuffing the cigarette back in his pocket. "Gotta keep that bod in tip-top shape, right?"

Danse had expected some snide response to taunt him for being an extreme reformist, but the ghoul was devoid. "Something along those lines, yes."

"Did they make you quit it?" MacCready asked incredulously, sipping up another inhale between two fingers.

"Of course not. Boot camp is tough enough without recruits struggling through withdrawals."

"So what made you give it up?"

"I just decided it was for the best if I wanted to fully commit myself to the Brotherhood. No distractions make for a clear head."

"Did you find it hard quitting?" MacCready persisted, casual in his intense interrogation. He reminded Danse of an overgrown kid.

"Not that I remember. I've never had any addictive tendencies."

Hancock chuffed smoke with sour humour. "Lucky you. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't drag on the smoke in the wastelands. It's as common as breathing clean air for most folk."

"It's common among the Brotherhood, too," Danse coincided. "We—" he checked himself with irritation "— _They_ don't restrict low-grade substances like tobacco and alcohol. Life in the wastes is harsh and often short, and even the hardiest soldiers need to blow of some steam after a long day in the field. As long as its off-duty and in moderation. Even Maxson drinks and has been known to smoke, though not all that often. He places a lot of importance on physical conditioning and mental clarity."

"You do drink though, right?" MacCready asked, almost in worry.

"I might be a soldier, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying a beer now and then."

The merc nodded in respect. "Been drinking since I was six. Never looked back."

Deacon hummed thoughtfully from his side of the campfire. "When you're covered in super mutant blood, coming off the jet DT's, and you're one step ahead of the Institute – it's Beantown Brown time!"

"Oh no, don't let this one near the jet," Hancock warned, pointing his stew-covered stirring rod at the grinning Deacon. "One whiff and suddenly the Prydwen will be crashin' into the ocean."

Deacon's grin flopped into an exaggerated gape. "Ilya told you about that? C'mon, the whole ship was on our ass and that was just my contingency plan. And anyway, if it can fly, it can swim, right?"

Danse was still grasping the concept. "Wait, what? You were going to crash the Prydwen into the ocean?"

"'Crash' is a strong word. Belly-flop would be more in line with what I had planned. But only if you didn't show up to fly us outta there. But you did. At the very last second, might I add. I still have nightmares about that, you know."

"Exactly why we should never let him get his hands on any of my jet," Hancock reinforced.

Deacon pouted, but then just worked on lighting another smoke. "Anyway, enough about me. Back to Danse. So you're like the smoke-free version of El Mad Max."

Jarred, Danse blinked at him, unsure whether to be offended or to just go with his off-hand humour and let it slide.

"Deacon, come on," Preston chided over by the supply crates. "That wasn't funny."

"No..." Danse eventually responded, a little defensively. "Maxson and I are nothing alike. Not any more." He turned his head away from the campfire in an attempt to deter any further comparisons between himself and Maxson. Ilya had joked about them being similar, too.

Hancock took a loud drag on the remainder of his stub and then tossed it into the campfire. "You know, Deadskull, you're a bit of a rarity in this pisshole world." Drifts of smoke tainted his voice as he shifted in the sand to find a more comfortable position, groaning in the effort. "Guess that's why our girl took a liking to ya. Don't get me wrong, it escapes my comprehension what she sees in a Brotherhood blockhead like you, but... I guess you have your good points."

"Uh, thank you, Hancock... I think."

"Welcome." The ghoul stirred at the stew a little more, though his black eyes were floundering around uncomfortably. Then he made an odd sound in his throat. "Actually, replaying that over, it sounded better in my head. Now I'm just regretting the way it came out..."

"It _was_ quite surreal."

"Can we just forget I ever said that and go back to insulting each other?"

"Works for me."

MacCready snorted in hilarity at them, and Preston and Deacon joined him, eventually setting off both Danse and Hancock.

"Can't say I didn't see it coming, though," Hancock continued once they had ceased their chuckles. "The pair of ya, all googly-eyed and hot and bothered around each other. Even when you would argue about how to equip the Minutemen when they were first getting on their feet, it was like the air was saturated in pheromones. Fun to watch at times, especially when Ilya would put you in your place. I still remember when she mimed shooting you in the back when you stormed off after losing a fight one time. And her gun was loaded with the safety off. _Or_ the time she got Dogmeat to piss on your armour when you were sleeping over in Sanctuary. Priceless."

Danse's brows flew up. "She did that?"

"Oh yeah."

MacCready laughed freely. "That's not even the worst of it."

"Some of the things she called you..." Hancock trailed off, smirking into the campfire. "Let's just say it made _me_ sound like an angel."

Danse contemplated a moment. "I had no idea she harboured such ill feelings toward me at first..."

"Oh nah, she still had the hots for you, man," MacCready assured, flicking off ash from his stub. "Whenever you were out of your armour, you were all she was looking at. It was all just sexual tension."

"Women, huh?" Hancock added.

"Mhm," Danse uttered thoughtfully, deeply ravelled in this new information. He was such a clueless moron. How had he not noticed all that time? Likely because he was too wound up in suppressing his own attraction to her.

"Regardless," Preston broke in pointedly, giving the others sharp eyes. "We're all happy for you and Ilya. You two have been through hell and come out the other side together, and the bond you guys have is unbreakable because of it."

"Thank you, Preston." Danse was humbled by their acceptance. And more than a little surprised. They hadn't said a word about him being a synth and undeserving of Ilya, as was his expectation. A part of him still thought that of himself.

"Just, no more fights, yeah?" Deacon pleaded with a hopeful face behind his shades. "Us kids wouldn't cope if mom and dad got a divorce. I've seen my fair share of you two butting your stubborn heads together and it honestly hurts mine."

"The arguments Ilya and I have had are nothing in comparison to how she and Maxson argue," Danse countered. 'Getting their alliance on its feet was a strenuous task for all three of us."

Deacon only hummed with piqued interest, but his glasses concealed any hint to where his thoughts went with that. "Sounds like they know each other's buttons and levers pretty well."

"You have no idea." Danse watched as Deacon's forehead lined with keen interest. "...Are you referring to the rumours circulating about them, Deacon?"

To this, the spy feigned ignorance. "Rumours? Oh the ones about them doing the ol' hanky-panky? Pfft. Nah. They'd end up destroying the Prydwen from the inside out."

MacCready coughed out a smokey giggle.

"Jesus, imagine the amount of hardcore BDSM toys the Brotherhood would have to fork out the caps for each week," Hancock teased. "This war would run dry before it even started."

They all laughed. Except for Danse. He didn't laugh at all.

"This conversation is over."

"Sorry, Danse," Deacon offered soberly. "Just goes to show how mindless those rumours are with how hard those two want to kill each other. Still, don't think I'll ever recover from that fracas you and Ili had after we pulled off that heist from the Prydwen. Scarred me for life. Plus I literally shat myself during that vertibird dog-fight, so that gives my trauma a real specific touch."

Danse would never forget that fight, either. Even then, he had still failed to understand that Ilya had killed those soldiers for him, because her feelings for him ran so much deeper than their soldierly bond. He was so blinded by his sense of honour and duty that he couldn't see what their relationship had become.

It wasn't until his exile that she finally made him understand how important they were to each other.

"Most of our clashes were probably of my doing..." he confessed, clearing his throat awkwardly, then just took the plunge and decided to confide in these men. His men. If he was going to take them seriously as his new squad, then trust was key. "I'm afraid I... haven't had a lot of experience with women throughout my life. There was a girl back in D.C that Cutler and I made a boyish competition out of winning over her affection, and she enjoyed both of our attention. To the point where she played the both of us quite superbly." He chuckled at the faraway memory, then it twisted away at his will. "But since joining the Brotherhood, I focused on nothing but my job."

Danse wasn't sure he liked the way Hancock's grin smeared slowly and eagerly across his face. "Well, crew-cut, luckily for you, I happen to have vast experience with the ladies. Just say the word."

His offer sounded of a dark, sinister nature, and Danse stared cautiously at him. "I think I'll take my chances my own way, Hancock."

"C'mon, don't be like that!" the ghoul brushed his rejection aside. "I know Ilya. She's one hell of a woman with one hell of a fire in her, so you just wanna make her purr like a kitty-cat, or roar like a tigress?"

"Um..."

"It's all about finding the right rhythm. Women are like cats, they like to be petted, paced, you can't just pounce in there and pound away like a mad dog—unless you know exactly how to get her hot and bothered on the fly. First, you get her all relaxed, treat her like a queen made of sweet honey, they like when you use your tongue and get—"

"Thank you, Hancock," Danse stopped him with a raised hand, feeling slightly heady. "That was very... insightful. But, how well do you and Ilya know each other, exactly...?"

The ghoul made what sounded like a scoff, his throat rattling the sound while he composed himself. "I wish. Look at me. You really think a woman like her would touch something like me?"

 _Something._

For the first time in his life, Danse felt a sharp pity for a ghoul. In asking about his relationship history with Ilya, it hadn't even crossed his mind that she would have rejected Hancock purely because he was a ghoul. Once, he wouldn't have even felt the need to ask that same question, automatically assuming Ilya wouldn't even consider bedding a ghoul simply because she was human.

But it wasn't his opinion of Ilya that had changed. After all, she had never shared the Brotherhood's view of ghouls. Rather, it was his opinion of Hancock that had changed, if subconsciously. His question was based on how close the two seemed to be, and not deterred by the fact that they were a different race. His altered mindset left him awestruck.

"I apologise. I didn't mean to be so insensitive..."

"Hey, don't sweat it, crew-cut," Hancock waved a dismissive hand. "I ain't sensitive about what I am. It is what it is. Others out there have it way worse than looking like a walking corpse. I'm just glad to be livin' my life, day by day."

"That's... an inspiring mindset," Danse applied carefully.

"Yeah, it is, ain't it? One that you should take note of."

Danse held Hancock's black gaze in deliberation, partly seeing through him, partly considering his candour, and the ghoul sent back a smug glint. Danse decided he still didn't know what to make of Hancock's untiring attempts to make him accept his synth identity. Whether it was out of a genuine care and understanding, or just out of the fun from irritating him and reminding him he wasn't superior.

He moved his gaze back over to the infant flames beneath the pot, taking a thoughtful gulp from a bottle of purified water that had been sitting there, then realising how thirsty he was and draining the whole thing. "There wouldn't happen to be any coffee brewed, would there?"

Preston stood up straight from leaning on the crates. "There's a jug in my tent, should still be some left." He was back a moment later with a clear pouring jug, just enough of the dark liquid inside for one more cup. He handed it and a sandy cup over to Danse, who placed the jug next to the pot over the fire to heat the coffee back up, then brushed the sand out of the cup.

"We're out of brahmin milk, though," Preston alerted him. "So I tried making the coffee the way Ilya does when we're out of milk with silt beans to thicken it, instead of pre-war coffee grinds. I think I didn't grind the beans enough though. It's kinda gritty."

"It should be fine, Preston. I'm not fussy with my coffee. Just as long as it does the job."

It tasted foul. Danse had to lock down his poker face and tighten his lips to keep himself from spitting it out on reflex. A bit dribbled down his chin and he swiped it away with the back of his wrist. It even smelled of wet dog, and Dogmeat was sniffing hesitantly at the empty jug in the sand. What on earth had the man done, urinated in it?

"Tastes like he dunked his ass in it, right?" Hancock was smirking at him.

Danse covertly spat the brew back into his cup. "You're sure we're out of brahmin milk? The Brotherhood uses a steady supply for their nutrient sludge packs."

Deacon grew a look of guilt. "Yeah, we might have gone through our weekly supply in one morning. We asked for more. Got a big fat no from a _Knight-Sergeant Gavil_." He enunciated the name in a bombastic tone. Danse knew Gavil as a strict hardhead, but he was what the logistics division needed.

"Rations are called rations for a reason," Danse chided them all with a sweep of terse eyes. "You need to be sensible with our supplies and stretch them out in moderation."

"Yes, boss," Deacon sulked.

The air was tense again, and Danse made a conscious effort to soften his face from its permanent scowl. He cleared his throat and swirled his coffee, watching the unblended grinds gather into a whirlpool. "While we're on the topic of milk, there's something else about Ilya that I'm wondering if any of you could shed some light on."

They all raised their heads his way with avid curiosity.

Clearing his throat before speaking on an awkward topic was becoming a habit now. "Her relationship with the super mutant, Strong." His lip curled on the words in automatic disgust. "It's puzzled me for some time, now." He dug his gaze back into his coffee swirls to concentrate on his wording. "When the mutant speaks of this 'milk of human kindness,' saying that Ilya will provide it for him... Should I be concerned?"

Their faces were as stale as the coffee. Blank. Staring. Then a muffled snort broke from MacCready, and it set them all off into guffaws.

There was feet stamping, thigh slapping, stomach clutching, tears, and eventually rolling. Danse waited, at first astonished and confused, but the longer it went on, the more his face fell into a dry slate.

"Oi!" The call came from Cait as she and Clay-Crawler hurried into the Niche, Clay carrying a small box of foraged organic materials in his power armour. "What's ticklin' yer assholes?"

"He—he thought!" Deacon tried between high-pitched hysterics, having fallen on his side. "Thought she—that she—was br—was br—breastfeeding Strong!"

The horrendous sound of Hancock's throat-grating laughter kicked up a notch at the reminder, having him in stitches with bouts of violent coughing. MacCready had his face stuffed into the sand in an attempt to smother his laughter, and Preston was bent over, trying to apologise to Danse through his face-scrunching hilarity.

Cait's sudden cackles broke over them all as she pointed an accusing finger at Danse, then fell to her knees and eventually rolled with the others. Clay-Crawler looked as though he didn't understand the situation, but his laughter built up anyway, probably just to join in. His became the loudest and most manic of them all, though he was lost in the meaning of it all.

Danse sat with a befuddled Dogmeat at his side, and dumped his helmet back over his head.

* * *

The mood had lifted around the doused campfire as they all shared their first breakfast in the Bloodlands. Cait had seasoned the squirrel stew with some foraged ingredients she and Clay-Crawler had found around the camp's border, clearing it all with the scribes to be sure nothing was poisonous or harmful. Apparently the scribes had quizzed Clay-Crawler for a lengthy time on his knowledge of the land's flora and fauna, still valuing him as a source of intel.

It would be no sweat off Danse's back if they decided to place him back in 'quarantine' for his knowledge. But Ilya would object. He suspected the only reason Maxson set the raider free was to appease Ilya after his exile.

Among the foraged ingredients was a bundle of red, glossy fruit that when split open like small, teardrop watermelons, oozed a vibrant orange juice from its red flesh. They were tangy and sweet, with a spicy aftertaste.

"Piper would go crazy for these," Cait slurped.

"Firefruit!" Clay-Crawler shouted to them all in explanation, taking another adoring bite of his and letting the orange liquid gush down his chin and drip onto his power armour. "Taste better than sickly blue mutfruit in other land."

Danse wasn't sure yet whether he liked the flavour with its tingling texture, but he observed the joy of the young raider, noticing that he seemed to be in a better mood this morning. Though he did look paler than usual. Which was a feat for his anaemic appearance. It was odd how he wasn't seemingly ecstatic about returning to his homeland. At least he could make the most of the peace and quiet while it lasted.

"Iceberry." This pale fruit was presented with a puckish grin. "Make funny. Go dizzy. But good dizzy. Make horny too."

It was an inebriant, Danse deduced.

"Well God forbid if we ever run out of the booze, berries are the next best thing," Deacon said with an aloof shrug.

The next native ingredient, which had been used to season the stew, was a fanned out leaf that was thick and squishy to the touch. Everyone squished at them curiously as they were passed around in a circle.

"Dewleaf," Clay-Crawler said, demonstrating by snapping open the point of the leaf where a clear gel seeped free, like the aloe vera plant Danse had read about in old-world medical journals. The raider suckled some of the gel out of the leaf, which had added a minty flavour to the stew, and then smeared it all over his face in rough motions, trying to show that it had topical healing qualities, as well as being edible.

"Ashroot." The last collected ingredient was a brown root, similar to a ginger or turmeric root. Sticking his tongue out, the raider brought it to his tastebuds and then mimed being repulsed by its taste. He then crushed the root in the hand of his power armour, showing why it lived up to its name in an ashy pile on his palm. Then he brought it back to his mouth and sampled some, rubbing at his metal stomach in delight.

"Taste like your bitter coffee," the raider declared. "But good. Like not-bitter coffee."

Everyone's interest was piqued, and it didn't take them long to begin experimenting with brewing coffee from the crushed grinds of the ashroot. The flavour was rich and indeed very similar to coffee beans, much like silt beans were, but ashroot had a slight cinnamon spice to it.

Danse liked it, and wondered if Ilya would, too. He would have to bring her a batch the next time he saw her. Perhaps as a gift in celebration of her recent promotion to paladin. It might even cheer her up a little.

He was busy with wistful thoughts of this, picturing Ilya's face and her smile, not noticing when Cait began snapping her fingers in his face to get his attention.

"You in there, Deadskull?" she taunted him, and he glowered over at her. "I said that there seems to be a stir in the camp this mornin' as we were comin' back. Those vertibird were bein' loaded up with gear. Heard some soldier-boys talkin' about their field assignments today. Somethin' about locatin' a water source. Doesn't sound to me like they're preparin' for a rescue any time soon..."

He halted mid-sip of his fresh coffee and speared her with a look of contempt. Then stood. "Why didn't you mention this sooner?" He was already shoving his helmet on and collecting up his rifle as her response was fired off.

"What're you gonna do, use sign language? Stomp yer feet at them? Without Ilya we can't do shite for the Minutemen."

"We can find out what Maxson has planned." Danse signed briskly at Preston. "Come with me. We're going to find Paladin Svensson."

With Dogmeat following, the two passed Nick and Richter at the fissured opening to the Niche. The two were bent over a scroll of tattered paper, penning down notes of some nature. They both stood up straight as Danse and Preston walked by.

"Morning," Nick greeted suspiciously. "Where are you two off to?"

Danse felt wary about using his voice this far out and let Preston take charge.

"The Brotherhood's mobilising for something. We're going to find out what."

The synth took one look at the agitation in the two of them and put the pieces together. "And you don't think it's for a rescue mission."

"Not from what Cait heard," Preston shook his head. "Apparently they're moving in on a water source. Which means they'll be starting another fight with the raiders."

"Which then means a bigger delay for a rescue while the Brotherhood replenishes themselves after another battle," Nick extended for him with overtones of disappointment. "Ilya's gonna flip when she hears about this. If she hasn't already."

Nick accompanied them as they strode through the camp, ignoring the wide-eyes and deathly stares he received. Little did they know there were _two_ synths boldly walking in their midst. Danse took an inkling of pleasure from the thought, though it accompanied the dash of shame he always carried.

The camp churned with activity. Young aspirants and initiates moved with purpose, laden with burdens. Vertibirds were swallowing up troopers and field scribes as their rotors flirted with wisps of sand, expelling it across the air of the camp.

They found Paladin Svensson in the command tent, raised sometime in the night where the burned barracks had been. Elder Maxson was absent. Danse sighed in relief.

They were barred from entry by the sentry guards, where within paladins of all levels and ranks stood around a central table, hands under chins to ponder upon a spread map of the land. Svensson was collaborating with Gavil and some other officers, and it took him a moment to notice them. His eyes went immediately to Nick, held there with uncertainty, and Danse was reminded of how the man had reacted when Ilya had ungracefully mentioned him back in the slave tents. He had been... embarrassed by the sound of his name. Embarrassed to have known a synth.

The other paladin eventually excused himself and strode over. "Can I be of assistance?"

"We noticed you were mobilising for something," Preston began with forced politeness, desperate to know why a rescue wasn't on the agenda. "Is there any chance you could tell us what's going on?"

Again, the paladin's eyes darted to Nick before he drew the three of them away from the tent's entrance. It was obvious he was trying be courteous and conceal his suspicion. If the Institute was spying on the Brotherhood's plans out here, they would employ better methods than having a stark synth detective walk around simply asking for intel. Unless they were making use of this reverse psychology... Hmm. Danse was tangled in a moment of thoughtfulness before Svensson spoke in response.

"With the added load on our resources from taking in the liberated slaves, the Brotherhood needs an efficient source of water. Roughly fifty klicks south of here is a dried up river delta, but scouts may have found an entrance to an underground catacomb system where a fresh water basin could still exist. Unfortunately the raiders have occupied it, so we're gonna have to fight our way through if we want that water."

Preston shifted his weight with frustration. "Okay. I get that we need resources. But what about the Minutemen? We can't just leave them out there to be tortured and enslaved. I thought the Brotherhood was all about humanity." His voice shook with restraint, and Nick placed a mechanical hand to his shoulder to ease him. The act visibly unsettled the paladin, who had to force his eyes away from the hand.

"Has your command at least sent out a search party to find where they were taken," the detective asked more amicably.

Svensson remained temperate. "Of course. Two vertibirds were out scouting all night, and ground forces were dropped in once the tracks became too blurred to follow from air. They suspect the raiders began to cover their tracks once they passed a certain threshold in their territory, but from there, there are a number of camps and cave sites they could have been taken to. I know its frustrating, but it will take time to locate them and then determine a course of action. In the meantime, we need to focus on stabilising our presence in the desert and getting a good hold of our new territory. And right now that means casing out this water source to see what we're up against. Hopefully within a matter of days we'll have enough intel to make an assault."

Both Nick and Preston gave nods of reluctant understanding. Danse mulled in his silent bubble of space. The Brotherhood's strategy of choosing to accommodate the slaves over rescuing the Minutemen was a difficult toss-up, and one he was glad he didn't have to make. If Maxson hadn't changed his mind and decided to harbour the slaves, then the Brotherhood alone would have been able to make do with their current stockpile of purified water for multiple weeks, giving them ample time and manpower to focus all efforts into a search and rescue.

Whatever had changed Maxson's mind out there must have made a tremendous impact on him.

"I have another matter to go over with you," Nick sleuthed, and Svensson eyed him in suspense. "We still have some members of our group back in the Commonwealth waiting to be flown in, but we can't seem to get clearance to get our vertibird up in the air. Seems kinda petty to me, since the only battle here now is the tug-of-war between two specific hotheads..." His meaning of the duel between Ilya and Maxson wasn't lost on Svensson. "We have a proposal to get that fast-tracked, if you'll hear it."

"If I find your proposal worthy of attention, I'll bring it to the captain for his consideration."

Nick offered a fledgling smile in thanks. "You'll remember our pilot is a member of the notorious band of folk calling themselves the Children of Atom. I myself don't have an affiliation with them, but Ilya does, to some extent. The details are long and complicated, but what matters is that the band she knows are not like the ones in the Commonwealth, they're pacified, and by her doing. As long as no one disturbs them, they mind their own. You might have guessed that they have an interest in this place because of all the radiation they worship, and they offered to help with the war effort by shipping out supplies, specifically radiation meds.

"If our pilot could get the all-clear to head back to the Commonwealth, he could kill two birds with one stone. So to speak."

Svensson's brain ticked as he gave this some thought. "Allying ourselves with the Children of Atom isn't something we strive to do. We shoot them on sight."

"It doesn't need to involve the Brotherhood at all. This can just be an alliance between them and the Minutemen. Ilya's already given it the okay."

After more brain-ticking, Svensson nodded. "I'll pass this along next time I bump into Captain Kells or Elder Maxson.

"Have you heard anything about how the general's doing and when she'll be back in camp?" Preston asked eagerly. "She'll want to know about the progress with the search."

"Sorry, I haven't heard. Elder Maxson is back aboard the Prydwen and will no doubt be breaking the news to her."

Danse imagined she wouldn't be over the red moon to hear the Brotherhood were focusing their efforts elsewhere. As vertibird squadrons made lift-off across the camp and flocked south, he glanced skyward at the steel belly keeping their nest safe and wondered if there was a storm of clashing elements within.

* * *

 **A/N:** -Dumb-dumb Danse strikes again. It had been too long since he said something worthy of facepalming.

-Many of the lines were in-game. I especially love Deacon's quip about Beantown Brown time! And MacCready starting drinking at six? Damn. No wonder he looks forty...


	72. Sucker for Pain

**Sucker for Pain**

* * *

Ilya didn't know how long she had sat on the deck, staring into the swirling madness of herself. Paranoia of the radiation returning gripped her and held her in place, the fear of it bringing with it her sins and her dead husband. But being in here also helped.

It was like Danse was in here with her. His essence permeated everything she touched.

So she was confined in this strange limbo and unprepared when a well-mannered knocking on her hatch unravelled her. A lethargic blink, then she curved her head over in the direction of the sound, almost convinced she had imagined it.

The knock came again, only it was tempered with impatience. "Harper, open up. You missed the morning meal."

Maxson... fucker.

...

MAXSON!

Ilya shot up before her body could prepare itself and keeled back against the wall, the heavy thud resounding throughout the space. Shit. Fuck. Shitfuck. Her fingers dived to her travel sack on the bed and scrambled inside for the compact mirror she had scavenged once from a Super-Duper Mart. Something clattered out and onto the floor loudly as she did so. Damn it.

She looked like shitfuck. Eyes dark and bloodshot. Hair a nest of snarls and tangles. Skin greasy, sallow and bloodless. Her lips were still chafed by the desert sun and cracked like dry shale. She looked like a fucking junkie. She _was_ a fucking junkie.

Desperately she tried to scrap together her appearance, raking her fingers through her hair until she realised she was only in her sleepwear—a thin singlet and underwear.

The wheel to her hatch spun and it was too late to grab at the threads of her dignity. Maxson let himself in without a word, keeping his gaze low and averted as he shut the door behind him, though she didn't miss the initial glance he took of her. He had a coffee in hand.

Ilya reached for the duster she had worn to cover her state yesterday and shrugged into it, then raggedly stood at attention. Waiting tautly for the reckoning. Inside, she was screaming.

The elder just stood side-on at her hatch and gazed bleakly down at the deck, arranging his thoughts and devising a plan of approach. By the way he had just quietly entered and given her time to collect herself, he had known he would be walking in on a mess.

He spoke, levelly, tryingly. "I know you're off duty for the time being, but you still need to eat."

"Yessir."

With that detached response, Maxson consulted the floor with a distressed frown. "What happened yesterday was a great tragedy. One that none of us foresaw."

Her eyes honed on him. _None of us, or no one but you?_ She remembered the dream of him slitting Danse's throat in vivid detail and it strengthened her hostile glare.

Maxson then lifted his gaze to her, rimmed with the muddy darkness of pulling an all-nighter. The arrow glance to his head was stitched and cleansed, but still raw, and the bruising over his broken nose—a la her fury—still existed. He looked like just as much shitfuck as she did.

During her surveyance of him, she realised he was doing the same of her, but with bare concern. She wanted to feel he was covering his surveyance of her under his guise of compassion. But his eyes betrayed nothing. "I know you never asked to be in the position of leadership, never trained for it, never even wanted it, and that all of this must be overwhelming. If you need time to process, you have only to ask."

Ilya snapped her eyes back out of focus and stood locked like a soldier, finding it an easy facade to hide behind. She didn't ask for, train, or want any of this, but she took it all on regardless. It was her responsibility to lead the Minutemen in battle and she failed them all, even if Maxson had planned it all. Now her only way of atonement was to get them back.

"No, I've processed enough, Elder. I'm ready to get my men back."

He gazed at her for a brief moment longer, then made his approach to proffer out the coffee. "Here."

Ilya took it with stubborn reluctance, careful not to skim her fingers on his, and eyed him as he halted before her, close enough that she could smell his cleanliness and the leather of his coat, and just long enough to get a thorough look at her eyes. She felt it like a sharp invasion and her heart pattered anxiously.

Then he turned and strode deliberately from her, feigning deep thought or actually in deep thought, she didn't know. His slow steps of deliberation ceased in the centre of her quarters, where he was no doubt scouring for bottles of alcohol, stray chems, or maybe even bloodied knives from self-harm.

The jet inhaler was securely hidden in her pack. Sucker.

"Have you at least gotten some sleep?"

The question was spoken softly over his shoulder. His head remained angled back to await her answer though his eyes rested on Danse's old belongings scattered across the workbenches.

"...Thank you for the coffee," she answered in a cryptic no—he was smart enough to figure that out. His head moved back to where he was looking and Ilya wondered if he was thinking of Danse.

And if those thoughts were dangerous.

He cast back a scouting glance. "Drink it."

 _Persistent bastard._ She cupped the coffee's warmth and inhaled its richness, sceptical.

"If I was going to poison you, I'd have done it long before now."

Point... "Only now is the perfect time to label it as a suicide," she countered darkly.

Maxson, unexpectedly, allowed an amused smile to tip up the corner of his mouth. "A cunning suggestion. Though don't they say that poison is a woman's weapon?"

"A cunning cover."

He gave her that with an agreeing tilt of the head. Ilya sipped. Hm. Good coffee. From his secret stash of a luxury pre-war brew, no doubt.

Satisfied, Maxson then averted his eyes again. "Put some clothes on."

He stood there with his back turned while she rustled around pulling her uniform on. She should feel uncomfortable dressing with him in the room, given her inconvenient and unfortunate physical attraction to him, which had been forcefully spurned from becoming anything more after Danse's exile. But soldiers got used to stripping off in front of each other, even across genders depending on the military. It only would have been awkward if he had stood there watching...

"Elder," Ilya dully notified when she was done, dressed in her black issue jumpsuit. She stood in waiting with her backbone held rigidly straight once more.

As he turned, he didn't allow his eyes to trail up her body in the form-fitting uniform, despite having the perfect opportunity to. Good boy. "Are you fit for a briefing now, or after you've had something decent to eat? You look like you would benefit from it."

Ignoring his judgemental tone, Ilya noted he wasn't addressing her as a paladin, more as an associate. Back to this wish-wash between them again, then. "I'm assuming this is about the Minutemen? Let's do this now. I want to be out there kicking doors down."

The discouraging expression that fell on his face gave her adrenaline a cold shunt. "I'm afraid their rescue will have to wait for the moment. We have other critial matters to attend to—"

"Like what?" Ilya snapped, dropping her obedient pretence with a spate of outrage. "What could be more _critical_ than getting them back?"

He was patient with her. "In order to accommodate for the slaves we have and-will-be taking in, we need more resources. Specifically a steady supply of water. We've identified a potential source just south of here and will be concentrating our efforts on securing it from its raider inhabitants. Would you rather we cast out the slaves? Abandon those we liberate?"

"The very same slaves you were originally going to abandon?"

He ignored her snipe. "In pursuing this, it will also cement our hold of the region and make certain we know the terrain on a grid detail system. War is a real estate business, and we need to take advantage while the enemy is vulnerable and in retreat."

"Then let me and my team go after the Minutemen," she demanded, trying to dim the edge of desperation in her voice. "They're a small army and a damn good strike force."

"That would be tantamount to suicide," the elder shot down, a rising impatience penetrating his words. "We have yet to locate their whereabouts and your team could end up walking right into a fortified stronghold."

"Then give me some men and firepower. Let me lead a joint assault as a paladin of the Brotherhood. I'll get the Minutemen back, and help form a sense of camaraderie between our forces. We both know how important morale is."

In an effort to remain in control of the bout, Maxson fixed his jaw and his nostrils flared as he exhaled steadily. "While I'm sure you're more than capable of leading such an assault, you're in no condition for it. Even if you were, I can't confidently spare you the men. We need every unit out there securing and patrolling our new borders, especially while the enemy is desperate to hang on to their piece of the land. We're expecting a variety of ambushes and guerrilla tactics, and if I spread the Brotherhood too thin, we could find ourselves very quickly in the same predicament we did back in the Capital Wasteland with the Enclave. We need to concentrate our efforts."

It made sense. Damn him, it made calculated, ruthless sense. But it was her men and women out there suffering. The men being beaten and tortured, no doubt for information on her and their whole operation with the Brotherhood, and the women being raped and mutilated for much the same, but mostly for the enjoyment of their captors. Ilya remembered her own fear on the brink of the same fate. She wouldn't wish that on anyone. Not even Arthur fucking Maxson. Not even Kellogg... actually, on second thought...

Maxson was gauging her thoroughly as she stood brooding, a scintilla of hope tracing his exhausted features. He was going to be a hell of a lot more exhausted when she was done with him.

"Concentrate our efforts?" she mimicked his words with a viperous tongue, and the reaction on his face meant he knew he hadn't pacified her, and was preparing himself for further confrontations. "Like how you left me and the Minutemen to clear out this base while you and your big boys scatted off to raid the smaller encampments nearby? Did you have fun out there killing slaves in the crossfire? We didn't back here. We got slaughtered because you threw us to the wolves."

"You got slaughtered because of your negligence to lead them when they needed you most," he growled harshly at her, "preferring to put your bloodlust before your responsibilities."

Wounded by his words but unwilling to show it, Ilya nodded her head grimly at his low blow, then a bitter gulp of laughter fell out of her mouth. "You did all of this, didn't you," she accused, her temper growing more ravenous by the second. "Planned it all from the very start. Won me over to the Brotherhood's cause. Allied with my people to keep the Commonwealth in your hold. Used Danse as a liaison between us and our forces."

She sharpened her temper on his guarded expression and took a predatory step toward him. "When things went to shit with him, you tried to turn me against him, to kill him, and turn my own people against me. But that didn't work so you left me and my men to die down there, because you don't want us getting in your way while you nuke the shit out of this desert." For a split second his eyes were embossed by shock, then at his sudden growth of offence, her temper reared its fiery head on her final step. "Now you're making sure the last of my men die out there!"

"Is that what you think?" Maxson reared back at her, his expression cracking into fierce disbelief. "That I planned all this to happen? You truly think I'm capable of something so monstrous? That I would condemn an _entire_ company of men and women to slaughter and slavery for nothing but my convenience and pride? That I have no conscience, no honour!"

He had advanced to meet her and she stood poised for attack. "Yes, I think you're a monster! You're willing to murder every innocent synth in the Commonwealth just for being what they are, even if they mean no harm, even if they stand unarmed before you and beg you to see how sentient they are. After what you did to Danse, what _more_ you were willing to do to him if I hadn't stopped you, you're capable of anything!"

"You know nothing about me." His cold response was eerie, but it wasn't enough of a coolant against her burning rage. She voiced the insults that had been burning her tongue for so long.

"I know you're a radical extremist, a genocidal murderer without conscience or honour! A psychopath playing god!"

He was not immune to her inferno. Angry sparks flared in his eyes and one of his large hands shot up to seize Ilya by the throat, not hard enough to pinch her airway but enough to wilt her under his dominance. "You know _nothing_ about me!" he hounded down at her face. Ilya held firm to her pride and didn't struggle against him, but there was a ferocity to his eyes that she had never seen before.

She spoke back through bared teeth, his hand leaving just enough room for her to draw hoarse breath. "I saw my men shoot themselves through the mouths because it was a better way to go than by the hand of the raider coming at him frothing at the mouth for his blood. I saw my women being raped right out in the field of combat while their blood was being sucked out from their slit throats by fucking vampires. I even killed some of them myself, telling myself it was in mercy. No amount of training could have prepared them for that. You left us to die because you knew that."

At that, his wrath was fulsome on her. "Your Minutemen were slaughtered not because of me, but because of you! I've tried to prepare you for this, guide you in the ways of leadership, advise you in the hardships of war, but your heart is too soft and your Minutemen suffered for it! They squandered the Brotherhood's training and in the end were too weak to withstand the cruelties of war! Do you want men at your back, or whimpering boys? Do not blame me for their incompetence. Blame yourself, and your own incompetence to lead!"

His voice was thunder and lightning, and the full impact of his words took root. Ilya struck his face with her palm, once, twice, crying out on her third strike, but his grasp was locked tight and his fucking beard was like a shock absorber. She stared back in enmity at the dark ice in the eyes upon her, that same unexpected sense of betrayal she had felt down on the battlefield mingling with her rage. It hurt more than it should, more than she wanted it to.

"You left me to die," she said in a scathing whisper against his oppression, but a slip of her hurt fell from the edges of her voice. He stared back, stunned for a moment, and she saw hints of his expression dissolving, right before he gave a growl and shoved her back into the nearest wall, ravines of rage lacerating his face.

A small cry leapt out of her and the previous bruises to her throat burned and throbbed under his tightened grip. But she morphed her cry into a hissing growl and clutched at his wrist with both hands, digging her nails into his coat sleeve. "Right where you want me," she struggled out in a dirty taunt, knowing it would frustrate him more.

"Perhaps I should have left you down there to die," he responded abrasively, his breath feathering across her face. She snarled back and reached instead for his throat in kind, burying her thumbs in where it would hinder his windpipe. He gagged and strained for air, but it didn't affect his strength. They both clung on to each other, strangling each other in a sadistic gambit.

Ilya couldn't deny the sexual tension rubbing static fury between them, it only encouraged their physical tussles. Secretly, she loved and loathed it the same. The chance to get up close and personal with him, lash out at him with her pent up tension, but to feel the dark, twisted pleasure of getting a rise out of him and feeling the enlivening pain of the reactions she could summon from him. It was a game to her. And the pain dulled everything else.

"Why didn't you," Ilya strained to ask him, "let me die? It would have been easy for you."

Her thumbs dug in deeper on his throat to make it harder for him to answer her. With his spare hand he pulled off one of hers and pinned her arm against the wall above her head, leaving them both one-handed in their joint strangulation.

Then Maxson moved closer to her. Ilya's heart plucked at a wild rhythm as his body closed the distance to hers and hovered against her. The dark heat in his eyes spoke of his intentions before he lowered in against her wary mouth. Ilya was frozen in his hold, and his lips grazed against hers, his beard adding a coarse touch that she didn't like nor dislike.

His kiss caused her thoughts to scatter beyond retrieval and she found herself responding, accepting his lips and allowing them to move against hers. She didn't encourage or discourage him, stuck in shock, and he took advantage of that, pressing himself harder against her body and lifting her toward him by the throat.

He wasn't harsh, but he wasn't gentle either. His body was hard and broad beneath his battlecoat, luring her by lust alone as it clouded her mind. When their breathing picked up in their shared eagerness, she remembered her grip on his throat and renewed its strength again. Maxson growled and responded in kind, then she felt a sharp but delicious pain as his teeth bit on her lower lip and pulled for a moment before he withdrew from her.

Hate kiss. Ilya barely comprehended what that just was, but the root of it was simple enough. They both knew it. But it meant nothing next to Danse. Maxson meant nothing next to him. Guilt set in. Even if she hadn't returned his kiss and had pushed him away, she hadn't stopped him straight away either.

"Do it, then," Ilya encouraged him. "Finish it. Murder me, right here, with your bare hands, the way a man does it. Show me exactly the man you are."

She felt his hand crush her throat harder as a warning, narrowing her airways and inducing soft gags from her throat. She held his black gaze and didn't fend him off, she deserved it. Because he was right about the Minutemen. It was her fault.

The sharp pain through the bruising on her throat urged tears to squeeze out from the corners of her eyes, and they were soon joined by the real tears of despair from the weight of blame and grief.

Seeing the sheen of tears, Maxson faltered in his oppression and slackened his grip. His eyes flitted down to her throat and he stared at her bare skin as his fingers drew away. She watched him frown in confusion, then take on a look of remorse. He must have remembered the bruising and lacerations she bore. Must have been so blinded by wrath that he had completely forgotten them.

He released her and stepped back in a confused shame. Ilya rested there against the wall, feeling drained all of a sudden, wondering if the jet withdrawals were creeping back in, or if it was just the walls closing in around her. Her throat rasped on each swallow and tears trickled on each blink. She wasn't sure if they were from physical or emotional pain any more.

She grazed heavy eyes over Maxson. He stood motionless, lost in his thoughts staring at the deck. His austerity was sapped away.

"Get out."

He lifted his gaze back up to her and seemed to consider her demand. She recognised a stray tint of regret in his blue eyes but wasn't in the frame of mind to accept it.

"Get out," she repeated as she drifted over to the bed and rolled onto it, curling up on her side to hide her teary disgrace.

Danse. The Minutemen. Nate. The jet.

"Harper, I'm sorry for those words I spoke... I'm sorry for hurting you."

"Please just get out, Maxson." She barely withheld a sob, her shoulders shaking with the silent grief that was pushing to burst forth.

She heard his footsteps come nearer and felt his presence linger above her. The shadow of his hand was poised to rest on her quivering shoulder, and it hovered indecisively.

It never came to rest on her shoulder as his shadow fled with the sound of his footfalls.

* * *

 **A/N:** Betcha didn't expect that to happen.

-To those who wanted Ilya/Maxson to happen, I hope you're prepared for a very dark and complicated love/hate romp. To those who are TeamDanse, don't despair, he'll always be my number one boy.


	73. This Desert Ain't Big Enough

**This Desert Ain't Big Enough...**

* * *

Ilya spent her days of recovery cooped up in the Prydwen, burning a quiet flame of fury, weaving a sinful path of dark secrets and self-destruction, drowning in the molasses of her sorrow, and herself. War was yawning and stretching below and all around her, and she was powerless on its cusp. A restless, pacing creature by day, a languid, derelict creature by night.

She would overlook the camp far below, watching it expand and grow denser with defences day by day, wondering where Danse fit in amongst it all and if he was coping with the same restlessness and soul-searching as her. How would he react when she told him what happened between her and Maxson? Because she had to tell him. The thought of making him a victim of her sins was unbearable.

As for her other secrets and sins, the torture she inflicted on that wretched raider, the jet, the hallucinations and her encroaching insanity, they were her burdens and hers alone. He had been through enough. She was protecting him from herself and keeping him out of her darkness was the only way she could see of not destroying him further. Or anyone else that needed her fortitude.

She envied those free soldiers as they came and went in the camp, free to their simple responsibilities to their units, free to the simple task of killing things that needed killing out there.

Out on the flight deck, under constant guard to prevent the suicide attempt the elder was paranoid she would make, she would follow the vertibirds with slitted eyes in the cruel sunlight, wondering at their daily excursions to No Man's Delta in the deep valley beyond, but omitting to question the elder on their operations. The elder, in return, left her to her own devices.

In fact, it was suspiciously as though he was avoiding her, relying only on Cade's regular psych eval reports, which she was skilfully outmaneuvering. Deacon's Railroad spy tips, a pre-war psychology education, and a natural knack for psychological insight had its advantages.

The shadow of Maxson's lips were stained on hers, like a phantom kiss she couldn't rid herself of. She wanted to hate the memory of it. She hated the way her body had responded to his. Heated and malleable under his domineering press. His boldness had unlocked her and she was furious at herself. And him.

Some nights, to keep her mind from twisting in on itself, she would watch the oil wells burn off their rich deposits into the wailing eyes of the stars. The earth was already beaten and ravaged, what more was the smouldering of her dark blood?

Other nights, she would give in and burrow into the delicious dark of her quarters, pining for Danse as the radiation crept in around her, reducing her into a curl of quivering limbs. He was just beneath her, just an airdrop's distance away, right there, yet so far and unreachable it was torturous. All she had of him to dwell on was the memory he left of his arms enfolding her in their delirious slumber down in the bunker. Nate hadn't come for her again, and she was both thankful and mournful for it. The jet became her decadent sanctum and a filler for the void Danse left in her, and she couldn't sleep without it.

But she was running dry.

Hancock was the only source out here she could crawl to, at least until they could get a supply chain up and running with the Children of Atom. This fucking prison Maxson kept locking her in. Locked away from Danse, away from the Minutemen, away from jet; it was going to kill her if she didn't break out. Was the elder trying to protect her from the world, or protect the world from her?

Or just keep her in close range for his own entertainment?

She thought back to what Groves had snarled after she had caught the two of them fighting in his quarters and then dragged her below deck, that Maxson only brought her with him for her entertainment value, that their rivalry was a healthy challenge that turned him on, along with the doses of satisfaction he got from each victory over her. Maxson strove to be an honourable man, in his own sense of the notion. He was radical and misguided, but honour was a focal point for him, and a raw nerve she could pick at whenever he screwed up. So could he really be that corrupt, perverted? Or was Groves the corrupt one, driven by an overprotective sense of duty to her young elder, or maybe even jealousy?

To keep her mind occupied and off Maxson, Ilya retreated to her quarters amidst the bustle for the midday rations. Her workstation had collected quite the stack of reports on what was now officially labelled the Minutemen Massacre. It had a crude ring to it that everyone took up, and despite it's recoiling brashness, it served as a harsh reminder to how they had to do better going forward in this war. For the living, as well as the dead.

Ilya had been putting off tending to the reports, avoiding even the faintest whiff of paper if her deskfan angled the air through the weighted stack toward her. But the longer she seemed to put off the painful task, the more the dead haunted her, and the worse her nightmares grew.

With a sigh, Ilya gathered the papers up and settled onto the deck, spreading them out in a wide arc like a child would her fresh paintings. It helped the sorting process.

Topped up on her second-to-last inhaler of jet, she read the Brotherhood reports in great hungry chunks, eager for an explanation as to why her Minutemen had been so quickly overwhelmed. It couldn't have simply been by the conventional means of being outnumbered. It had been something she had done wrong. Something she had overlooked. The specimens had given the Dark Bloods an edge, sure, but once the Minutemen had regrouped to defend the slaves, they had held them off until the Brotherhood came back.

Could it have been down to damaged morale, like Maxson had said? Many didn't trust their general, didn't trust their allies, and when war-painted, suicidal madmen charged them it was the tip of the iceberg. They gave in. All because she failed to be a stable leader.

Brotherhood accounts spoke nothing of ineffective tactics on the Minutemen's part. Most of the reports were just from troopers retelling the battle in their own perspective, emphasising the sheer numbers and drive of the enemy. Most even commended the Minutemen for their efforts in holding out so long.

For hours, she tortured herself over this. Reliving moments in the battle she would never forget, the horrid, haunting sights and sounds, the air of impending death from the hopeless. Finally, frustrated, she sat back and tousled her hair. The heat was making her uniform clammy and her skin was itching. She unzipped and peeled the jumpsuit down to her hips, freeing some skin in just a white tank top. She noticed that her jumpsuit didn't sit quite as snugly around her waist as it once had. Well, as long as she hadn't lost any centimetres around her ass or tits, she didn't think Danse would notice next time he saw her.

Then again, he did have annoyingly excellent attention to detail.

Still sticky with the heat and frustration, Ilya concentrated back on the reports scattered around her like an accusing mural. Her last hit of jet was still streaming through her veins and keeping her sharp. Not enough to have her a feral fucktard on a blood bender, but just enough to keep her going.

Before she could add another useless recount to the pile of read papers, there was a rap at her hatch. Her head snapped up and she felt herself coil like a snake primed to strike. If Maxson was back for round two, he was going to get it up the dickhole.

"Paladin Harper, Elder Maxson requests your presence on the observation bridge." Footsteps receded, leaving Ilya with her thoughts. The observation bridge, where they wouldn't be alone and at the mercy of each other. Good.

* * *

An ochre glow from the desert outside slanted in through the murky viewport. At times, Ilya wondered how Maxson could stand here in his great hours of momentous ideation when the windows were so fucking dusty he probably couldn't even see shit.

He was pacing like a lion in ponderous thought when she descended the rungs, his head lowered with a fist propped out as if in mid-gesture. To contrast her peeled off uniform and exposed skin, he was adamantly still bearing his battlecoat; he must be stifling in the heavy thing. Her aggravated attraction to him flared open like an inflamed wound, but she hardened her exterior against it.

His expression was caught off guard when he noticed her step on deck, a raising of the brows and widening of the eyes, but it quickly reset itself into his iconic austerity.

What would be an ordinary manner in most people, looked a complete mess on him. And it was all because of her. The Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel, master of a portable nation, was an unsettled mess because of her; a wastelander, a vault dweller, a junkie scavver, a nobody.

Ilya was damn proud of herself in this tiny, immature moment.

The stagnation between them dribbled on until Maxson found ground, or grew impatient with her lack of address. Moodily, he gestured her over to a table that she noticed never had a place in there before. "Paladin. How are you feeling?" he opened in a conciliatory stalemate. At least that was how she interpreted it.

"Fine. Thank you, Elder."

"Good." His nod was forced but adept, only a sliver of awkwardness ruined it. "I figured your briefing was overdue. Plans are progressing out in the wastes," he explained as she stepped her way cautiously toward the table to oppose him. "It's time you had an understanding of how it's all falling together."

He stole an experimental look at her as she laid her eyes on the spread chart of the desert, but she avoided him. Instead, she reined her focus on the new points of interest on the map and waited for him to continue. Tick tock, motherfucker.

His recovery was brittle. "From here we have an excellent vantage point over the presiding valley, and the surrounding outposts along the ridges give us a wide-spread perimeter of defence." He tapped a finger at Camp Lex Talionis, and Ilya hadn't forgotten the smutty antics his finger had played the last time they stood over a map together. He pushed through this reminder of his filthy vandalism by naming off the outlying posts, but Ilya's body was already responding to the stray thought of that damned finger doing unspeakable things to her. She bit the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood.

"It's at the northern foot of this delta that we've identified a cave entrance into a substantial groundwater aquifer. Scribes have been able to extract small samples in various points from the surface, and we know the water is highly acidic and irradiated. Purification will take time, but we have the knowledge and technology for it. In the long-run, it will save us both time and resources manufacturing our water on-site rather than having it shipped out along our supply lines from the Capital Wasteland.

"Strike forces have been testing the raiders' defences, and recon teams have run site surveys and have spent the week scouring for any other entrances into the cave systems, manicuring the battlefield to our advantage. Raiders are dug in deep and have the catacombs well defended, putting us at a natural disadvantage. We'll be relying on our technological superiority in the assault, beginning with air strikes to soften their lines and using the resulting chaos as a smokescreen to push through. Shock and awe will be our advantage."

He was alight with arrogance and ego. There was that famous Brotherhood bravado, Ilya thought while gnawing her lip. Roar, big guns and big dicks, roar. But again, an aggressive assault would put any slaves in those caves at risk. "There's no subtle alternative?" she asked, her words arid of emotion, eyes kept on the map to avoid his possible backlash.

"This is the subtle alternative," was his callous rebutter. "If I had it my way, we would nuke the entire site from the air."

That was when she shot him a pithy look, but it was his turn to avoid meeting her eyes. He was concentrating too precisely on the map, and because of this it caused a curious doubt to prick at the base of Ilya's stomach. Did he really mean that, or was he pulling up a smokescreen of ruthlessness to throw her off the scent of the naked humanity she had torn from him that morning in her quarters?

"Have Neriah and Ketway come up with countermeasures for the specimens, yet?" she moved on, hand under her chin in thought.

"Unfortunately not. The soldiers we recovered that had been infected have all regained consciousness and show minimal side effects, though we're still keeping them in obs." He shifted his weight over the table in open frustration. "How the raiders seem to harness such enhanced abilities from the specimens while our infected soldiers are merely paralysed temporarily, we have yet to understand. Even your raider ally was set loose once we determined he was of no further use to us."

And here she thought Clay-Crawler was set loose to keep her appeased after Danse's exile. Privately, she still believed that. He would only deny it if she asked.

"Do we know what the black gas was during the second wave down in camp?"

Maxson's eyes crackled like the chemical gas with his remembrance of it. "That was our first encounter. We have our scribes analysing recovered materials from the field. Hopefully they'll turn up something useful soon. For now, all we know is that it's fatal." A touch of acrimony escaped his final word, as though he held a grudge on the gas' sentience for killing his soldiers.

"And the purple gas?"

"That's been more prevalent. We believe it's a nerve toxin, specifically designed, or cultured, to incapacitate its victims... Perfect to snatch up an entire detachment for slavery," he added resentfully.

Ilya was too frosted to even nod in agreement of his resentment. "Yes, sir."

He studied the cold refinery of her manner, and her perceptive eye tracked the evidence of incoming speech. She got in first.

"Who will be heading the assault?"

Maxson named off a Paladin-Commander Cardona that Ilya had vaguely heard of. No one Danse had trumpeted on about to her though, so therefore, no one outstanding by his high standards. Without anything else to ask or add, she nodded and stood vapidly. "Yes, Elder."

Evidently they were both deploying their self-protective smokescreens, and he suddenly brought it upon himself to attempt clearing the glade of fog between them. "Harper, I promise you, once we've found our footing out here, we will commit to a full-scale rescue attempt for your Minutemen."

For whatever is left of them, she added to herself despondently. "Yes, Elder."

He couldn't penetrate her detachment. He tried again, pulling out the modesty. "If you can't take my word for anything else, then at least take my word for this. I've proven to you before that I'm a man of my word."

Danse. He _was_ still alive. At least as far as she knew. He fucking better be. With a sigh of resignation, Ilya relaxed her spine. "So why are you telling me all this?" She gestured over the map with a sweeping motion. "Without a force behind me I can't contribute to the assault." A sad shrug rolled off her shoulders against her will.

"You're a paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel," Maxson reminded her heartily, "your brothers and sisters will rally behind you with honour, for glory." His attempt to bolster her resolve made her feel undeserving of rank. As an officer, newly promoted or not, she shouldn't need to look to her superiors for moral support. "I want you to oversee the operation once Cardona's offensive is underway, secure the back gate and sweep on through behind her main forces, taking up the mantle of command in the aftermath. We can't be certain how extensive the cave systems are beneath the delta and the main force could end up on a lengthy excursion."

Ilya's eyes had widened with belated comprehension. "You want me, a junior paladin, to relieve a senior paladin-commander of her command and overtake her conquered outpost for myself?"

"I want you to bear the responsibilities of being my ally. Don't concern yourself about stepping on toes; Cardona's been briefed on the situation and she accepts the split duty-shift without question. You're in a unique—if at times convoluted—position of representing both the Brotherhood of Steel and the Minutemen. You'll be overseeing the new outpost's defences as my ally, with the authority of a paladin. And when the Minutemen are restored and possibly reinforced with fresh recruits from the Commonwealth, if you wish it, then the aquifer will be yours to protect."

It was a lot to swallow. With so many questions clogging her saliva. Maxson was holding her slowly rationalising stare, his eyes slightly squinted with intensity, awaiting her verdict, testing her level of confidence. He was testing her, no doubt about it.

Her gaze skipped out the viewport to the spread lands beyond, and her tone sculpted her words into sharp incredulity. "Putting aside your sudden confidence in my command, the delta outpost will be our new frontier. You want the Minutemen out on the front, after what they've just been through?"

"I want the Minutemen where they're the most experienced, in the aquifer pulling the important labour of extracting that water." His finger stabbed down at the landmark for emphasis, drawing her glare back. "You're right, they're not soldiers by trade, they're farmers, builders, technical workers, _settlers_ , and we need to settle this land if we're to commit to a long-term campaign. But you won't be left undefended. The valley's border outposts will be well-stationed and on constant watch, and until we can push further out and establish a new front, the Brotherhood will be on heavy guard and conducting regular patrols, under your command."

Ilya folded her arms loosely and paced a few steps along the table's length, daunted by responsibility yet thirsty for power against him. How could he trust her with command after the Minutemen Massacre? How could she trust herself? How could anyone trust her? This must be how Danse felt, except he carried the loss of those closest to him, his own squad, whereas her losses were a faceless mass that she felt disconnected from. With the more responsibility came less humanity.

Was Maxson testing her, preening her for command, taking her under his wing, or just trying to destroy her by setting her up to fail again? Was this another of his games? What was he playing?

"I want you to be my eyes and ears on the frontier, Harper," Maxson broke through her spiralling indecision. His words took her back to when he had tasked her with finding the Institute. _I want you to be our eyes and ears out there._ When she connected her gaze with his, there was an uncanny outpouring of humility. Of... need. It caught her off guard. She didn't understand it, but it was enough to halt her pacing.

"Why?" she asked quietly, sceptically, personally.

The emotive reaction across his face was sparse. "Because I want you to know you can trust me."

She clicked the missing pieces together on her own. Her wanted her to trust that he could keep her Minutemen safe. Ilya tore her eyes from the potency of his and skimmed unseeingly over the map. She wanted to trust him. Wanted to believe that there was good in him and that it could overpower the brutal epitome of the Brotherhood that he was. But to trust him would be a leap of faith, a gamble, and she couldn't gamble with the lives of the Minutemen. Not after the massacre.

Seeing Ilya's internal struggle, Maxson drew back from the map with an air of conclusion and stood straight. "I'm aware that I've dropped quite a bombshell on you with this. The offensive, what we're calling Operation Purity, will happen in two days time. You have until the morning to decide."

Sensing she was about to be dismissed, Ilya snapped back into her military shell and lifted her chin. "Requesting permission to leave the Prydwen, Elder."

"For what purpose?" Quick, testy.

 _To see Danse. To escape you. To get more jet. But first and foremost,_ "To see to my dead and organise for their bodies to be shipped back home to their loved ones."

Maxson's testy visage softened with understanding. He nodded gradually. "Of course. Though you realise some of their remains are unidentifiable. We can't be certain whom among them are deceased until we recover those that were captured."

She suppressed a wince thinking of the mutilated corpses. "I understand. But we can at least ship the ones home that we have identified."

Another gradual nod, with condolence. She wondered how much of it was formal and how much was genuine. "Very well. I'll pass on the order to airlift their bodies back to the Commonwealth. One of your people approached Paladin Svensson asking for flight clearance to head back north, too. I had denied the request on the grounds of it presenting instability in the ranks. You want to open a supply line with the Children of Atom?"

Danse must have pushed through that request, Ilya realised. He was the one who had played bureaucrat to get that alliance up and running in the first place. It eased her to know he was keeping himself busy down there to help things run smoothly in her stead. And to keep himself occupied while he waited for her to come back to him.

"The Minutemen have a trade agreement with the Children of Atom in Far Harbour. I went through a lot out there to secure their cooperation with me, but I trust them to honour our arrangement. Their influence is spreading across the Commonwealth to pacify the estranged members of their church. With luck, we could soon have a trade outpost in their base back in the Glowing Sea."

Maxson looked sceptical, but he let her continue. He had slowly stepped his way closer to her as she had explained, as if drawn by his unsettled curiosity to a dangerous proposal. She hadn't really taken much notice until he was right at the corner of the table with her, pale eyes boring into her with suspicion.

"Lieutenant Richter, our pilot that caused a little stir with your men when they first landed?" she reminded him. The elder gave a knowing nod. "He's a high ranking member of their church, and I have a loyal ally in him. Along with the meds and other supplies, he's offered to ferry back a small squad of men to help with not only security but with relations. If you allow it, they'll only mingle with the Minutemen and will stay clear of the Brotherhood."

His eyes ticked between hers, processing and pondering. With reluctance, he gave his assent. "I suppose trust goes both ways," he muttered under his breath. "As long as you can give me your word that their presence won't ignite civil unrest among your people, then I'll give you my word that the Brotherhood won't interfere in your relations."

"You have my word," Ilya agreed.

"Then you have mine," he delivered plainly, with finality. "Send word to your pilot that he may join the vertibird procession back to the Commonwealth, and then will be free to embark where he needs to from there."

The words Ilya ventured to say next felt unworthy, undeserved, yet compelled forth by some ambiguous force. "Thank you."

The expression staring back at her didn't flinch. "You're welcome. Dismissed, Paladin Harper."

"Elder."

She pivoted on her heel and made a quick retreat for the flight deck, resisting the urge to look back to catch him watching her go.

* * *

Filing through each and every one of the collected holotags from the fallen Minutemen imprinted their names into Ilya's brain like curses, yet by the time she was through all eighty-nine of them, their names had coagulated into one incoherent, writhing mass that pushed on her brain until she felt she would throw up from the overwhelming guilt.

The hot wind streamed whispers through her hair and into the whorls of her ears, dark, vile whispers that accused and condemned her. But she stood a statuesque form listening to them as Brotherhood soldiers carried the black body bags of her dead men and women to their vertibirds. Those black sheets of material flexed loudly with the stiff bodies within, and each of those bodies had faces, stiff faces, dead faces that loved ones would see and collapse before. Eighty-nine of them. It was going to be a multiple-trip procession.

She had to squeeze some meaning from the bitter rind of their deaths. She would. Those slaves were alive only because these men and women sacrificed their lives. They had honoured the Minutemen way, become martyrs to freedom. And she would see to it that their sacrifice for freedom would never be forgotten.

Danse would have wanted to be here with her while the bodies were being loaded for transport. Not only to support her, but to pay his respects. But Ilya had to stand in witness alone, to bear the weight alone. Bear the blame alone. Danse would get his chance to pay his respects when the procession set out at sundown. They all would.

Turning from the scene on a dismal step, Ilya toured her way through the camp, Brotherhood parting for her path with respectful nods and utterances. Even those she recognised that didn't respect her gave their condolences.

The camp had been wholly transformed in the week she had been aboard the airship. Sandbagged laser turret posts hemmed the outer walls of carbon polymer barricades, and walkways were constructed behind these walls on great wooden logs and planks, chiselled and crafted into sturdy constructs. The Brotherhood had reinforced the labyrinth work of trenches with deployable sheets of steel to prop up against incoming grenades. Tent roofs sported these deployable sheets too, coated in ablative resins to shield them from the inevitable acid rains. The clay huts that were still standing after the siege had also been treated with the resin. Latticework shaded the array of tent stations, from munitions depots, medical bunkers, galleys and rec areas, and field labs. The focal command tent was swarming with officers, and Ilya guessed the officers' mess was attached nearby. Impressive, the Prydwen didn't even have an officers' mess. Just an officers' table.

Back when she was a green recruit, she had embarrassed Danse one time by sitting next to him at the officers' table. She had shamelessly tucked into her meal while the entire table fell silent and Danse had gone red.

Now look at them.

Ilya quickened her pace as she broke free of the main thoroughfares and weaved her way through crops of rock and vegetation to where the large cave had been blasted apart in the battle. She stopped sharply when she reached its broken mouth. The scene of her disgrace. A vicious near-rape in the mass of faceless hands.

Now that she was here, confronting it felt anticlimactic. Many women out there—and probably men too—were enduring much worse. She had fought and won herself instant, satisfying closure when she reared back and stabbed that one raider to oblivion. The rest had met their due when her men buried bullets in them all at point blank, with her bloodthirsty blessing.

Many out there would never get that same closure. No, she wasn't going to let this weigh her down.

Full of this resolve, Ilya braced and stepped into the cave's rubble. The bodies and weapons were gone, but much of the stray furnishings and charred pieces of equipment were left where they fell.

Remnants of her screams laced into those accusing whispers for a moment before she shoved them off her shoulders and broke into a frantic search for Danse's holotags. They had been torn from her neck when her jumpsuit had been ripped open. Flung off to the right while she had been restrained facing the cave mouth.

Eyes wild through the darkness, Ilya twisted in that direction and sifted through the rubble and scrap, but all her fingers could find were chunks of nothingness. Shell casings, shredded shoes, a dusty belt, several empty mags, shreds of black rags that were probably the remains of someone's clothing, a finger and then a charcoaled bone with the flesh only half blasted off. She thought it might have been a forearm. Cracked road goggles. A pristine grenade pin. Rocks and dust.

But no holotag. She spent over an hour scavenging through the blast zone until she was certain she had searched ever square inch, even on the opposite end of the cave and all the way back to the deeper passage. What if the Brotherhood had found them? Found Paladin Danse's holotags way out here? Fuck. _Fuck._

Weary, defeated, and cold with dread, Ilya slumped to her knees in the rubble of the cave and balanced on the edge of tears.

She felt Nate's presence before his voice preceded him from the dark. "I told you you're only going to destroy him, honey."

* * *

 **A/N:** Another dark addition, but I did warn you that this story would get darker the deeper it got, lol. Ilya's, Danse's, and Maxson's personal story arcs carry a lot of that darkness, and we're focusing a lot on those three right now which is why there's so much of the angst. But on a greater scope of things I plan to bring us back to the fun, fluffy, wild and bloody elements once we get out into the exploration of clan cultures and world-building. I still have so much tricks to pull out of my ass it feels like it will never end! Thank you so much for your undying love and support!


	74. Let's Ride Into the Sunset Together

**Let's Ride Into the Sunset Together**

* * *

Outrunning her demons gave Ilya's step a frantic, ungainly note, but she was determined to reach Danse before her feet gave out beneath her. She knew she wouldn't be able to pick herself back up without him.

Rather than relief, the sight of Deacon, MacCready and Nick speaking with Paladin Svensson on her path toward their crew campsite gave her a feeling of impeded impatience. They were chatting outside the supply depot, and spotted her immediately.

Deacon hopped off a crate and flashed her a charming grin. "Ah, my favourite meat-shield," he greeted with a complimenting giggle, but at her threadbare smile, his attempt at being casual flopped with a frown. "Wow. You okay, boss?" He moved as if to catch her. She must really look like hell.

"Yeah," she lied on approach, giving the four of their concerned looks a dismissive sweep with her steeled mask.

But Deacon wasn't buying it, and his move as if to catch her turned into a gesture for a hug. And Deacon never did hugs. "Hey, c'mon, bring it in," he said to her, indicating with a flick of his head and flicking his fingers inward to encourage her toward him.

Ilya suddenly felt ambushed by affection and stood unsure, unaccustomed to such treatment. Not just from Deacon, but in general. So when he tsked her and stepped in to awkwardly embrace her, she was stiff and unyielding.

"Ili, c'mon, don't make this even more awkward for me," he pleaded under his breath beside her ear.

It made her grin at his expense, and she accepted his support with sudden need, giving in to her misery. He wasn't Danse, but he was Deacon, and they hadn't yet had their reunion moment since arriving in the bloodlands. This was it. But it shouldn't be. It should have been so much more, they both deserved that from each other, but this place didn't give a single flying-fuck who you were and what you deserved.

"There we go. That wasn't so hard now, was it?" her eccentric friend muttered as he twisted them both left to right to give a perky flair to their hug.

"Thanks, Deacon. I forgot how good hugs were." Ilya closed her eyes against his shoulder and savoured the moment. It was nice. Beneath all the stress and tension, she hadn't realised how much she had missed Deacon.

"This one's a freebie. If you want more, you gotta pay up in treats. I take nuka-colas or sugarbombs."

"Yeah, 'cause he steals all of mine." MacCready sent a foul look Deacon's way from the sidelines.

"I'll have to stock up my supplies," she chuckled in response as they parted.

Nick and Paladin Svensson were watching them with matching grins, and Ilya noted how odd it was to see a synth and Brotherhood soldier standing side by side so comfortably. "You guys been holed up down here okay?" Ilya addressed them all.

"We've been getting by just fine, kiddo," Nick replied. "All of us have been taking turns caring for the freed slaves, keeping ourselves busy. Don't you worry about us. How've you been doing? Elder Maxson been playing nice up there?"

Ilya checked a vicious laugh. Instead she plopped a sassy hand to her hip and scowled. "Oh Elder Maxson's been playing, I'll say that."

Svensson was eyeing her with cool interest, and she shrugged at him. "You don't even wanna know, Svensson."

"I guess I'll have to take your word for it, paladin." Mentioning her rank was his way of reminding her not to slander his elder in public.

Ilya directed her gaze back to Nick, allowing a slight shade of desperation through. "Where is he?"

The old synth nodded like he had anticipated her question. "Back at camp, waiting for you to show up."

"The Niche. But it also goes by Butt-Crack Canyon, you'll see why," MacCready's eyebrows danced suggestively.

Ilya ignored the merc and stayed her eyes on Nick. "How is he?"

"Well he hardly ever leaves the camp, if that doesn't say it all."

It did. Danse was a productive, ambitious man, and men like that don't sit around all day doing nothing. It was all she needed to hear to know he wasn't doing well. She gave Nick a thankful look and turned to hurry to camp, but the synth spoke out before she could.

"You, uh, might also wanna know that the Brotherhood took him in for a little 'chat' with Maxson that night after you went up to the airship. He never told us what happened, but they brought him back looking like a wreck, then they shoved him to the ground for good measure."

God. By his own brothers. And what the hell had Maxson 'chatted' with him about? Ilya's blood ran frigid cold as she listened in horror. Had they interrogated him? Tortured him? She knew Maxson abolished the practice of torture in the Brotherhood, but even an elder couldn't control his soldiers behind closed doors. All men had breaking points, and prejudices strained by the horrors of war became venting points for madness.

That they did that to him just because they thought he was a wastelander that their elder mistrusted and took a personal disliking to, _just_ because the wastelander was close to _her_. And inside, Danse considered himself something far worse than that. It would have torn him up inside.

Grim with dread, Ilya rushed away from them without a word and ambled on yearning footsteps for the campsite. She needed him more than ever, and he needed her. It had only been a week, but this was the longest amount of time they had been apart since his exile. Her breath was hot and struggling to keep up with the rate of her ragged heartbeat.

The entrance to the Niche—she was _not_ going to think of it as the Butt-Crack—was under Grand Zealot Richter's devout protection. He stood rigid like an honour guard just like he had at the entrance to the Nucleus submarine on the island of Far Harbour, but upon seeing her roaring in, he made to speak.

"Sister Harp—"

"We'll speak later, brother. I'm sorry."

He blinked several times before giving a single, offended nod, and Ilya placed a hand on his armoured shoulder as she streaked past him. They hadn't yet properly spoken since their arrival, either, and his brotherly devotion to her ungrateful hide was undeserved. Time around here was short and precious.

Her appearance into the sheltered campsite drew piqued stares. Preston, Cait, Hancock, Clay, Dogmeat. She collected three called greetings, one creepy smile, and a puppyish bark. But only the movement of one lone figure had her undivided eye.

Danse had been sitting off by himself near the rock walls at the back of camp, tending to his rifle with a grave expression. When those grave eyes spotted her, his expression fell into something akin to awestruck, and he stood upright, all but dropping his rifle to the ground.

Ilya almost lost her fragilely-held composure as she made straight for him, not even looking at the others as she breezed through them. Danse made for her with the same blind haste, his eyes wild with deprivation and need. She had intended to rush into him and chant his name over and over, but he had the same intent, with tenfold the fervour.

They collided and clutched at one another, hands almost tearing at each other for firm handholds, with Ilya finding herself practically picked off her feet as Danse eagerly bowled into her and pressed his lips passionately into hers.

His kiss obliterated what remained of Maxson's. Their names laced into a single word as they both spoke at each other, then came a cascade of demands to know if the other was okay, what had happened, were they alright? To the onlookers it was all a gush of nonsense words and soothings.

When Danse's hands cupped at Ilya's pinched and quailing face, her name tenderly on his lips, eyes forcefully piercing through her thin veil of composure, she could no longer hold herself together like a paladin should, like a general should. Ugly, childish sobs finally broke free and robbed her of comprehensible words, her entire body keeling in on itself and dependent on his support.

The destroyed look on his face at her distress broke her heart, but she couldn't well up the broken dam once it was released, and emotions fell from her in excess. Blinded by tears and debilitating grief, Ilya could only feel as Danse lifted her in his gallant arms and swept her into a tactical retreat somewhere cool and dark. When her body was settled down on something soft, only then did she realise he had taken her into one of the tents.

His warm and protective body settled against hers, a strong arm draping around her to fold her into his chest. Smothered in his familiar smell, his heat, his shelter, her fingers found his shirt and bunched the material up into her fists, and the fingers of the hand at the back of her head bunched her hair up into his gentler fist, where his lips pressed an unbroken kiss into her hair.

There they hid together, in the tiny dark of a tent, in a tiny camp protected by allies and friends, within a larger camp surrounded by enemies of enemies that were friends, in a harsh new world that patiently bid its time for their blood. There they hid together, burying their grief in one another.

* * *

Clay-Crawler stared at the tent and blinked, sniffed without comprehension, then looked about to the others in a silent plea for explanation. None gave one. They all turned away from the echoes of the scene with glum faces and got back to their menial tasks.

Clay-Crawler had never witnessed anything so intense between two people before. Whisper and Dancer were back together, but they didn't seem happy, they seemed, well, unhappy. He was utterly mind-blown by such adult complexities.

The Dancer had been nigh unapproachable all week, grouchy without good reason, snapping whenever Clay-Crawler so much as asked a question. He had even grouched at him about staying in his power armour and never leaving it. That it was unsanitary and 'downright disgusting.' But why would he want to leave it? It was his new extension to his body he had been missing out on his whole life. He didn't get out of his clothes and wash them, so why should he do that with his power armour? He wouldn't even let him just sit nearby and watch him disassemble and reassemble his rifle.

" _Is it absolutely necessary for you to sit there and stare? Go and make yourself useful. Find something to scavenge, or go stare at a rock, I don't care. Just be a nuisance somewhere else, damn it."_

It wasn't his fault that the Dancer was very, _very_ easy to stare at. Slay would have whipped him for showing attraction to anyone else other than her. But Whisper wasn't cruel like Slay, and he didn't think she would mind if he stared at her mate. Only, the Dancer _did_ mind...

And then suddenly one look at Whisper and the Dancer was a different man. Gone was the grouch. The observant young raider had gotten good at studying people in his years of sexual servitude at the warlord Slay's feet. Whenever Whisper and Dancer joined gazes, their eyes radiated trust and an unparalleled bond. It lit them up in all dark spaces until everything else around them was black and white.

Why couldn't Dancer be that fond of him, too? Ever since making his blood-bond with Whisper in their first battle together, he had sought to woo the Dancer into accepting his blood-bond, also. But he had to build up to it, gain the Dancer's respect not only in bloody, glorious battle, but in life.

But he had no idea how to do that. He had to get closer to the Dancer, understand what he respected in a blood-bond mate. But that was proving to be impossible when the Dancer wouldn't even let him understand him.

Clay-Crawler had heard that Dancer was a synth, but he didn't know what that was. He knew the gist of it, that they were machine-people, but Dancer didn't seem like a machine-man to him. And he certainly didn't _look_ like a machine.

The young raider stomped slowly away from his protective stance over the tent to go stare at a rock. He had a sudden urge to pick up two and bang them together. What to do with himself, now? He was feeling a little sick again. It came in waves, but entering the heat of the bloodlands was making him feel worse than usual. Sometimes he would get dizzy and have to find a way to sit down in his power armour. Once, Hang-Cock blew some smoke in his face, and it made him projectile vomit on the ghoul, who wasn't very happy about having to hand-wash his outfit for the night.

With the wave of nausea passing, the raider got back to wondering what to do with himself. He still needed to renew his blood-bond with Whisper. It was well overdue. The blood-bond should be renewed in ritual every full moon. Back when he was imprisoned at the airport by the Brotherhood, he had asked Whisper to bring him the fresh blood of a slain foe for the ritual. She had agreed. But then a lot had happened; he had thought the Boss-Man had eaten the Dancer, then Whisper had disappeared and he had thought Boss-Man had eaten her, too, eventually fearing for his own life if the Boss-Man thought he might make a tasty meal also, but then realising he would actually be honoured to be good enough for Boss-Man's consumption. Actually, now that he thought about it, there were worse ways to die. Being eaten alive by Boss-Man wouldn't be so bad.

Boss-Man was also very easy to stare at... Clay-Crawler wandered off-thought while reminiscing on his mighty beard. Thinking of being eaten by Boss-Man reminded him of a comment D-Con had made when Clay-Crawler had told him of his fears of Boss-Man having eaten Whisper.

" _I have a hunch Maxson wants to eat Ilya, but not in the way you're thinking..."_

He hadn't gotten the meaning at the time. But after seeing the Boss-Man's public display of concern when Whisper was feared dead or taken in the ambush, and then the way he had looked at her when confronted with her injuries, Clay-Crawler had a hunch now, too.

Anyway, after all this fear of people being eaten, he had then been set free. And it was then that he had met Horny, his arch spirit-nemesis in the form of a radstag.

Clay-Crawler suddenly knew what he must do to ensure his blood-bond with Whisper remained strong. He had to hunt down Horny, in whatever form the Ancient Spirits sent him in, and slay him for his hot blood to present to her.

His raider-style helmet was slotted over his head and smacked securely into place. His riot shotgun was taken in hand, with his incendiary ripper and complimentary belt of dynamite firmly beneath the plating of his armour to prevent it being shot on his person. Energised with purpose, he set off out of the Butt-Crack, past the scary holy man with the cool tattoo on his face, and into the stern mass of the Brotherhood.

D-Con appeared down at his side, frightening the raider and inducing his heavy armour to lift off the ground a fraction in his start.

"What shenanigans are we up to today?" the con artist chirped with a smirk, sniper rifle balanced against his shoulder. He was munching on a handful of native bitternuts, which were, well, bitter nuts...

"What is shen-a-gins?"

"Let me rephrase that into raider-speak. Who-we-kill-today? Actually that sounded more like super mutant-speak... then again, you and Strong did hit it off when you first met... Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, what'cha doin'?"

"I go on hunt to bring blood for Whisper. Ask for right to renew blond-bond." Clay-Crawler figured there was no harm in D-Con knowing about the ritual. Though the actual performance of the renewal ritual was a private, intimate bonding exercise between two blood-bound warriors, the initial ritual hunt could be assisted by clan mates. The kill, however, must be made by the one performing the ritual.

D-Con hummed thoughtfully at the idea of this. He often mocked the raider's adopted Dark Blood culture, but Clay-Crawler didn't mind this. The Dark Bloods were their sworn enemies, and even if he had been raised in their ways, he still hated them more than anyone in this camp.

"I'm getting a marriage proposal vibe from this," came the mock.

"Want to marry Whisper. Do many fucks. Make many warrior children... But Whisper is mate of Dancer. Has been promised to Dancer... not want to be killed by Dancer..."

His big brother chortled. "That, my weird and wonderful little friend, is totally understandable. And he would kill you. Don't even doubt that for a second."

They walked side-by-side through the dusky camp, heading for the nearest exit through the great watchtower walls of wood and steel, when Clay-Crawler suddenly thought to ask, "You come hunt with me?"

"Well someone's gotta make sure you don't get yourself killed out there," D-Con responded matter-of-factly. "Without Danse's training, you're likely to end up face-first in a hole somewhere. And now that Ili's back, I have a very strong feeling that her and lover-boy are gonna need some quality time together to find their bearings before they put together a plan to get the Minutemen back, and tear those raiders all a new asshole in the process. So I wanna get intimate with this land. Learn my way around town. Get friendly with the locals. You wandering off by your lonesome gave me the perfect opportunity. And I'm all about seizing opportunities." The raider only noticed then that the man was complete with a long, heat-warding shawl, and a travel pack that carried the tell-tale sound of water canteens bobbing with his steps.

"You bring penis gun for girls?"

"Oh I brought the penis gun for girls, my friend. Remember, it's not about the size, it's about how you use it." D-Con produced his silenced pistol from the back of his jeans and flicked off the safety. A single smug brow was perked up above the frames of his shades.

Clay-Crawler shrugged as the pair were let out of the camp's gates and into the stilted lands. Where was the fun in a quiet, clean death?

* * *

"Big open spaces." D-Con shuddered audibly as the unlikely duo traipsed through the Brotherhood's DMZ between Camp Talion and No Man's Delta. "Right now, where we are, totally a sniper's dream. I should know."

The dusk was a burnt orange, warning of night's procession and the beasts it brought out with it, but in the precious pocket of time from when the sun began to wane to when the first stars pierced through the film of the day's residue, Clay-Crawler knew now was the best time for a quick hunt.

The temperature was perfect. Not so hot it would sap the energy out through the skin, and not so cold with the night it would stiffen the bones with a deep chill. It was the perfect hour of the bloodhunt.

Out south, the valley gave signs of life with scatterings of stunted trees and dehydrated reeds, but out west and east, only beige dunes stretched as far as the eye could see, heat leeching out in a wavering haze. This was his home, yet he had never been out this far before. His existence had been confined to the stormiest region of the land in the Screaming Craters, where the Dark Bloods crawled, brawled, and fucked in their deep caves.

"Last partner I had before Ilya ended up going... well, kinda insane. I think it was all my show tune medleys... So as long as you don't go clawing your eyes out, I think we're good."

Clay-Crawler passed a fascinated glance back at the spy on his tail, who was grinning unendingly at him. "Partner clawed own eyes out?"

The grin puckered into an expression of thought. "Well, that could have been down to the psychotats he got hooked on. And the liquor. _And_ then the suicide attempts that I kept interrupting... You know, it probably wasn't even me after all... Damn, I wish I had a pip-boy so I could blast some tunes on the radio like Ili does when she's out hunting. What would be most fitting right now? Maybe some Elvis? You can never go wrong with _the king_."

"Who is King Elvis?"

"...I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear you say that."

They were following the tracks of a colony of giant fire ants, where Clay-Crawler hoped they would find slain corpses of various creatures in the nest to help them discover what other creatures resided in this region. If they found something with horns, he knew it would be a sign from the Ancient Spirits that Horny was close.

The question foremost in his mind was if Horny was meant to be presented to Whisper, or Dancer? If he found Horny today, it would be blooded for Whisper. If not, he would blood the best kill he could find, and keep looking for Horny another day, destined to be blooded for Dancer.

The raider peered back at the vigilant figure following him. "Dancer is synth," he opened uncouthly, waiting for the spy's response.

"...Yes. Le Danse is le synth." The response was wary. Almost protective. "Your point?"

"What _is_ synth?"

A long, dragged sigh. "Whew. You're opening a can of worms, here. Everyone has their own stack of chips to throw in on that one. But the way myself and the Railroad see it; synths are people, just like you and me. Human, synthetic, ghoul, mutant, we're all just people, right?" There was the sound of bitternuts on teeth behind him. "Class is in. So, you got your Gen 1's, the robotic guys with the simple programming. My friend Glory likes to think of them as people, but to me, they're basically just protectrons. Then you got your Gen 2's, which are a step up on the A.I scale, but they're still limited by their programming. Old Nick Valentine is like a Gen 2, but he's a prototype step between Gen 2 and 3. I don't even think he knows the full extent of what he is. But you've talked with him, lived with him for a while now. He acts just like any other sentient person."

Nick did seem like a real person, Clay-Crawler nodded back at D-Con. "What is sentient?"

"You are. I am. Anything or anyone that can think and feel is sentient. Not to be confused with sapient, which is strictly reserved for wise _beings_ , not just humans, who are capable of thinking with a level of reasoning, using morals and emotions. To put it simply, it's the difference between animal survival instincts, and beings with a conscious purpose. Got it?"

"Am I sapient or sentient?"

"You're both, buddy. Actually on second thought... nah, I'm pretty sure you're both."

"Are synths sapient?"

Deacon snapped into another bitternut. "That's where the Gen 3's come in. Danse is a Gen 3. So, he was 'created' in a lab, but he's fully biological right down to the DNA. Thought processes are organic. The only difference between you and him, is that he was grown using science, and you were born in you're mommy's tum-tum using daddy's dirty charm. Different origin using different methods, but same result. He's full flesh and blood, with the sapience to think for himself and decide his own purpose in life, he just had a different start to life. The way I see it, how is growing a person and calling them a synth any different than growing a person using genetic manipulation from multiple sources of DNA, and then shoving them in some woman's uterus? Maybe he was synthetically designed instead of organically conceived, but why is that any different than a pre-war human, say like our mystical Queen Ilya, who might have been genetically tweaked in the womb by her parents because they wanted her to have great-great-granny Gertrude's nose? They had the science back then, so who knew what the heck they were playing around with. King Arthur has a stick up his royal ass over Danse being a synth, when Ilya could be just as unnatural because of the time she was born in. Technology, man. Where do we draw the line? These are life's greatest questions."

Despite the sardonic tone, D-Con was very serious about all this, his words a flowing rant of deeply held beliefs. Still, all of that went over Clay-Crawler's head and left his brain with a howling wind of emptiness, just like the desert on a cold night. All he wanted to know was how he could be Dancer's friend. He didn't really care how different he was. That didn't matter to him.

"Why do Brotherhood hate synths?"

It took a few steps through the sand before D-Con answered. "For one, they're racist asshats, or I suppose speciesist is more accurate to say. But really. They're afraid. Dangerous technology is their niche, and they see synths as dangerous because they don't understand them. Same kinda applies to why they hate ghouls. They're afraid they'll go feral. They're big bullies, but they're just afraid," he repeated.

Clay-Crawler understood that. He was once afraid of girls because he didn't understand them. "When was slave, once heard other slaves talk of the Synth Hunters out in desert winds. They came from the Eye Hunter clans, bounty hunters of different pacts. Raiders, ghouls, synths, Nightkin. All took the eyes of victims, once heads given for payment. Kept eyes for personal tokens. But Synth Hunters were outcast for trying to kill synth clan, trying to make all clans only hunt synth bounties. For being outcast, their leader—known only as the Sabbath Courser—led a great raid on clans, accusing of all being synths themselves, marking their bodies with the word SYNTH, written in their own blood. Now, Eye Hunter clans all scattered in desert. Nobody knows where."

D-Con had moved up on Clay-Crawler's side, listening inquisitively, not even chewing on his bitternuts. "That sounds like some intense hatred for synths. Not sure I like the sound of this Sabbath Courser, either. If they're actually a courser, then that could spell some serious trouble."

"Whisper told not to spread word that Dancer is synth, but what if someone still finds out? What if Synth Hunters hunt Dancer for his eyes and write on his body with SYNTH in his own blood?"

He was experiencing a thrust of fear that was abnormal to him. Never in his recalled life had he cared for so many people all at once, never had he felt the threat of losing the things he cared for. His life up to this point had been governed by survival instincts, dependent on a narrow, selfish mindset, friendships fleeting as slaves came and died around him. Now, he was ravenous for companionship, for things to cling onto. And the fear of suddenly losing those things, those people, was fresh and terrifying.

Through his inward panic, the raider became aware of D-Con's light smacking at the flank of his helmet. "Hey, we're here to help the big movers and shakers, right? That means protecting Ilya and Danse, and yes, even Maxson. Even if all they seem to be doing right now is moving and shaking _each other_. So as long as we just do our jobs, these Synth Hunters won't lay a finger on Danse, or the other two boneheads. Yeah?"

No, they wouldn't! Not his blood-brother! Not his clan leaders! That was how he would earn Dancer's respect. He would protect him from these Synth Hunters! And on their bodies he would write with their own blood SYNTH HATERS. Everyone would see and know. Even Boss-Man and the Brotherhood would know that synth haters would reap a bloody death in the name of loyalty to his blood-clan.

They continued on the ant tracks until they came upon a cluster of mounds in the sand. A few giant fire ants were patrolling the colony, their probing antennae picking up movement nearby, inducing them all to patter around in Clay and D-Con's direction. Several pairs of black, bulging eyes weighed them up, waiting for the moment to strike in unison.

D-Con lowered to a knee and readied his rifle. "Toss a boom-stick in there, Clay."

Reaching under his armour plate for his dynamite bundle, the raider snatched a stick free and worked quickly to light the fuse with the flame ignition on his incendiary ripper. He had learned that his metal hands wouldn't allow him to fumble with a lighter.

The sparking fuse riled up the ants, their mandibles clicking and spreading to breath out warning flames. Clay-Crawler tossed the dynamite with an excited holler, watching it as if in slow motion as it landed amongst the charging insects and bounced up in an elaborate puff of sand.

D-Con stayed his hand to conserve ammo, but Clay-Crawler ripped open on the ants with his riot shotgun right before the dynamite blasted them apart in a gruesome mangle of twitching limbs. He wailed his victorious battlecry at the black pit left behind. Such a glorious sight! Fire and death! He rushed forward to embrace it.

"You know you might actually have to get out of your power armour if you wanna fit in one of those—" D-Con began to call from behind, but Clay-Crawler was too excited to listen, diving head-first into the closest ant mound. Even with his helmet deep inside the steaming pit of decaying corpses, he still heard his companion from outside.

"Atom save us all... and didn't I say earlier that you'd just end up face-first in a hole somewhere? I must have the Sight..."

"The Sight?!"

"Come on," D-Con ignored him, his footsteps resounding from outside. "Get outta there before something grabs you, because I'm _not_ diving in after you."

"Found Horny!"

"Hah... Uh, say what now?"

Clay-Crawler struggled one of his metal arms deeper into the pit of corpses, flailing a little as he drew out the decaying radraptor. He held it up by its lanky neck to show the nervously approaching spy.

"Clay... What. The _shit._ Is _that?_ "

"Radraptor," he answered delightfully, rushing it closer to D-Con in his glee. The man hopped back and pulled a face of denial.

"Gah, geezus. No-no-no. That is a dinosaur." He pointed at it insistently, nervous laughter bubbling out of him in a high pitch. "That is a dinosaur, Clay. A _dinosaur_. When Ilya sees this..." he didn't finish that thought, instead just shaking his head and speaking in a high pitch to match his laughter. "It's a dinosaur. Why, radiation? Of all the things to mutate, why a dinosaur? Just, why?"

The raider had no clue what a dinosaur was. It was a radraptor, a bipedal, reptilian predator that would bring fear to even the most glory-hungry of Dark Bloods. If he propped it up right, the creature would stand as tall as him in his power armour, with sickle claws that could tear a man in half, and razor-sharp teeth studding jaws large enough to rip his helmeted head clean off.

Didn't D-Con understand what this find meant? This one was a female, but the male radraptors possessed a single, self-righteous horn that he had witnessed gouge many a man and woman. One of them out there was Horny.

They plodded on, conscious of the deepening dusk. Giant fire ants don't have the liquid blood of most other beasts, so Clay-Crawler left their carcasses be. On the journey for radraptors, he spotted the inert shape of a radwalker and pointed it out to the now-very-edgy D-Con.

"See that? No, that is stick. _That._ Yes. Is Giant radwalker. When he spots predator, he goes still, makes himself look like stick. But will defend himself when threatened. Has nasty limbs. Sharp, like swords."

D-Con was gaping at it with an air of parody. "He's a stick insect? A deadly stick insect." Laughter blubbered out of his mouth and he quaffed it back. "Getting killed by a giant walking stick is probably more embarrassing than getting killed by a bloatfly."

"Dark Bloods hunted for sport, or when food for slaves was low. Have seen warriors killed. Stabbed through heart for testing radwalker's rage."

"Chameleons then, huh? I can respect that. As of now, Mister. Radwalker is my new favourite animal out here."

Clay-Crawler quite liked them, too. They had a particular taste that he could never really describe. The closest description would be charred, smoked wood. Similar to fire ant, but less crunchy.

"Want to taste?"

D-Con twisted him a surprised look. "What, you mean kill him? Look at him, he's just minding his own business, being a stick. Livin' the life."

"Death part of life." The raider shrugged and drew his ripper, bearing it in flames and revving its chainsaw mechanism to prepare for the kill. D-Con cussed him out as he trotted for the unsuspecting creature, something like 'psycho mud squatter.'

The radwalker only stirred as the raider got within two steps distance, hissing from its tiny mouth and rearing up its sword-arms. But by then it was too late. The raider felled his fiery, meat-shredding stroke and cut the creature down its thin length, exoskeleton grinding apart where its flesh was roasted and minced from the inside out. It squealed in agony, and the raider shrieked with amusement, sawing into its fibrous flesh again and again, glorified by the flames and blood.

Once he was through, D-Con was standing right at his side, inspecting the mess with disapproval. "That was really disturbing to watch, you know that?"

Clay-Crawler felt anything but disturbed. He tore off one of the sword-limbs, squeezed the hot blood into a waterskin, then burnt the edge of the limbs with the flames of his ripper to cauterize the bleeding and save what remained trapped in the limb for cooking tonight. "Blood for Whisper, if we not find Horny before dark," he explained to D-Con's dismayed expression as he packed the limb away in a belt fastened around his armour.

"Whatever you say, cave-boy. Heh, that should be yours and Ili's stage names. Vault Girl and Cave Boy."

Their fourth interval between hunting for radraptors was started by D-Con.

"So," he piped at Clay's back after some quiet stalking. "You're fond of explosions. All types of explosions, right?"

"Yes. More flames and blood, the more the Ancient Spirits blessed it."

"Ah-hah. Cool. That's great. So the scribes got your input on the new chemical grenades the Dark Bloods use. You know how to make them, by any chance?"

"No. Wanted to know. Once watched Meek, one of the Spirit People with Sight, making some of the Nightfire to catch prey for her sacred brews. Asked for recipe. Got beaten by Eye-Daddy... Meek treated wounds. Meek was kind. Liked Meek."

"Eye-Daddy sounds like a charming fellow. So Nightfire is which, the purple or black stuff?"

"Purple," the raider confirmed. "Burns, hurts for a moment, but makes things sleep."

"And the black stuff is...?"

"Doomdust. Makes things dead."

"Nice," D-Con sniffed waggishly. "Simple. Pretty self-explanatory."

And that ended their fourth interval on the hunt. Clay-Crawler was growing impatient, fretting over the race against the sun. They had been on the hunt for several hours now, and he couldn't help but innocently wonder what Whisper and Dancer were doing right that moment. Would they be angry with him for leaving the camp? What if he brought nothing back to appease them? What if they deemed him unworthy of blood-bonding?

Something gyrated in his gut, and at first he thought it was nerves and fear, but when it rolled up his chest and then throat, he yanked off his helmet and swooned forward to rest on his armour's knee joints. Saliva leaked readily from his mouth and dropped thick globules into the sand as bile prepared itself for birth. Instead, the raider was dry retching with violent convulsions.

"I'll just be over here," D-Con offered his support from afar. "You've been looking green all week, I will say. You're not turning ghoul, are you? Cause if you go feral, Danse will put you down before you can even blink."

The raider couldn't even utter a sound of answer between the horrid heaves and gags harassing him. He must have eaten something bad. It had been a long time since he had tasted man flesh. Maybe he was going through withdrawals?

Once he felt his stomach had settled, he wiped a batch of slobber from his mouth, and D-Con interrupted the motion by banging an elbow into his armour, then gesturing outbound with an updraft of his chin.

"Check it out."

Clay-Crawler checked it out. And he gasped aloud in a mixture of reverence and joy. Clan territorial markings, the spears propped up in the dirt and adorned with symbols painted on rags that fluttered in the wind. Vials of florescent purple liquid swayed on pleated cords of metal rings. Jawless skulls dyed vibrant red were given rotten eyeballs to stare down those who dared approach, the irises painted over with the same vibrant red.

D-Con drew his rifle and bent his step, sunglasses flitting around in all directions and catching the sun on all the right angles to flash into Clay-Crawler's eyes. "Darks?" he asked coolly.

"Not Dark Bloods." He received a quizzical glance as he stepped closer to the land markers. "Red Claws." His metal fingers longed to touch at the trio claw design on the rags, the same as the one he had on his chin. Even as a young child, he still remembered in lucid detail as he received his marking upon his first kill, at the age of five season cycles. Then, not even a year later, he had received the marking of the Dark Bloods at the base of his skull.

"You guys all have such creative names for everything," D-Con teased as he gradually moved in, rifle still levelled on alert. "The Red Claws were your people, right? Your clan?"

"Yes," the raider absently heard himself respond. He was in the nostalgic limbo of revisiting old memories, old names and faces. Most of them were just powdery blurs, lost beneath a life of savagery.

"Brotherhood must have blown through here." Deacon lowered his rifle and stepped over to the inanimate power armour of a dead soldier, sitting up against a spear. He bent to check for any signs of life, then plucked something out from the soldier's neck, through the gap in the plating between helmet neckbrace and torso. It was a dart, red feather fletching on its tail. "Well, looks like a lowly mortal took out one of the Brotherhood. I'm waiting for that bolt of lightning to hit us now."

"Was good shot." Clay-Crawler poked at his own neck to indicate. "Red Claws are good archers. Have to be. Keep at distance from Dark Bloods. Use stealth."

D-Con nodded and examined the dart closer, tipping up his shades. "Nifty craftsmanship, too. Danse might want a look at this." When he was finished, the spy tucked the dart into a small compartment on his pack, then peered back to the dead Brotherhood soldier. "Weird that they just left him out here. Say what we will about the Brotherhood, but they don't leave their own behind unless there's no other option." With a considerate hand, he shuffled his fingers down the neckline of the soldier's uniform and snagged off his holotags, catching the engraved name before stuffing it into his pack. "Makes me question if this zone really is demilitarized if they couldn't even retrieve their dead..."

As he said that, there was a scattering of many heavy feet through hardened sand. The two shuffled low, creeping their way toward a rising mound to get a look at the commotion on the other side. Clay-Crawler's eyes bulged as he watched a pack of radraptors herding a giant radscorpion.

The menacing creature was reared up on its hind legs and hissing profusely, warding off its stalkers with its lethal pincers and agile stinger. But the radraptors were cunning, circling the creature to split its defences and drain its energy. They bounced in on their powerful hind legs to snap and taunt the radscorpion, evoking it into a short-lived rage before it had to twist in another direction to defend another vulnerable flank. More than once, its stinger came perilously close to striking one of the radraptors, but their agility was a grand match for the reflexes of the radscorpion's tail. The show reminded Clay-Crawler of the Screaming Craters gladiator pits.

"Well, this is gonna go on all night." D-Con's sniper rifle was propped up through the sand and his eye behind the lens of his glasses squinted down his scope, mouth twisted open in concentration.

"No!" the raider issued a harsh whisper as he blocked the rifle scope with his hand. "Only one is Horny. I must make kill."

"Buddy, they're animals. They're all horny, trust me."

"No-no. _My_ Horny! My Horny!"

Clearly the man didn't understand the wills of the Ancient Spirits. The disturbed look he was giving him came with bewildered words. "Okay, okay. You're horny, and so is one of the dinosaurs. I have no idea what that means, and I really just don't wanna know." His hands receded from his rifle in surrender.

"Good!" the raider went back to studying the show, watching each of the male radraptors for any signs as to which one was Horny. One stood off to the side, away from the huddle of the hunt, probably a scout. It was motionless at rest, but when it turned its head it was in a series of jerking motions. Reptilian in nature. Cold and calculating. For a moment the raider thought it had spotted him.

A jet of excitement coursed through him when one of the predators launched in on the radscorpion's forelegs, attempting to subdue its clapping pincer. But there was a quick series of rasping squeals as the great stinger struck down on the reptile, again and again in malevolent arcs. Blood and guts squirted and squeezed out from the gouged wound until the squealing was over, then the radscorpion took the carcass in its two pincers and in one great tug, ripped it in two to free the rest of its innards.

A retaliating strike had a set of jaws snapping hard around the tip of the tail while the radscorpion had been busy with its pincers. This radraptor, the scout that had been immobile, clung on for dear life as the creature spun and thrashed its stinger to loosen its rodeo, giving the others the chance to launch their united attack and pin down the beast for good.

Horny was that brave one on the stinger. Clay-Crawler just knew it. "Horny on tail," he informed the perturbed D-Con.

"Wait, what?"

Clay-Crawler was already half-way down the mound, a stick of dynamite flickering to life in his grip. "Big fuck you, Horny! Big fuck for you!"

"Oh geezus. No, Clay! Bad! Bad, Clay!"

There wasn't time to stop now. The dynamite was flung high over the mass of carnivorous gore, and with riot shotgun tracking in, the raider blasted off shells until one of them struck gold with an overhead explosion.

The radraptors were blown away from the impact, some losing limbs in wet snags of meat. Some managed to recover and flee, blood pouring from their injuries that would likely claim them in the night. One of those escapees, was Horny.

Seeing his destined prey escape with a final rasping roar of defiance, the raider copied its roar and stomped his giant metal foot to the sand. "Big giant fuck you, Horny!" he shrieked out at the peak of his lungs' capacity. His escape was disappointing, but it only set his fate for Dancer's blood-bond.

The bloodhunt was on, and it would never end until he was drinking blood from the carved hollow of that horn.

Determined to make this failed hunt count for something, Clay-Crawler stomped over to the corpses and took one of the female radraptors, her chest cavity crushed in by the sheer force of the explosion. She was still breathing, he realised, her large lidless eyes following him and her snarl twitching. He snapped her neck with a dry crack, not wanting to waste a drop of blood, then secured her corpse at the back of his belt, tying it around his midsection several times to keep her in place.

He turned, moody, and headed back to D-Con. Only, D-Con wasn't at the top of the mound. Raiders were.

He froze in place. None of them were in power armour, but he wasn't wearing his helmet, and if he made a move to grab it off his belt, he would be shot in the head.

 _Big fuckety._

Where was D-Con? His sand-stung eyes trawled over the surrounding mounds.

"You! Dark Blood!" one of the raiders pronounced, stabbing her spear in his direction with brutish motions. "You come into our territory! Disturb our hunt! Take our food! This is stupid. You are stupid. Did you think you could just take and walk away?"

They called him a Dark Blood... it took a moment for his panic to make way for his thoughts. Red Claws? Grimacing against the setting sun, he tried to identify their garbs and animal pelts.

"Red Claws!" he belted out, then pointed frantically to his chin. "See tattoo? Was Red Claw! Red Claw!" His finger was stabbing at his chin, nail indenting it with pain, but he had to will them to accept him! "Was taken by Dark Bloods. Given to Slay as personal slave. Heard many things, know many thing of enemy."

The woman at the head of the mound deposited a chilling glare on him, her red face paint half melted into her hair from the day's heat. She swapped her spear over to her other hand. "He is a Deep Throat. Kill him."

The Dark Bloods called spy's Deep Throats, too. As spears and arrows lifted, Clay-Crawler reached for his helmet and shoved it on just as an arrow tip smashed through the glass visor, halting inches away from pricking his eyeball. He shrieked in fright and reeled back, then felt the grating pain of a spear lodging in his side. His shriek became a howl and he bumbled over to the ground, mindlessly yanking the spear out of his armour and flesh.

A fist of plasma punched out black sand where the Red Claws had been moments before. He gasped in shock as he saw some of the bodies roll limbless and wrapped in neon fire. Some had jumped clear and were skillfully rolling to seek out cover.

D-Con appeared behind the charcoaled mound, his silenced pistol snipping through the sand to chase the raiders. "Clay, you're a great decoy for my 'nades, but now's when you're supposed to run!"

Run? He had finally found his long lost people and now he had to run? "Stop shooting my clan!" He made to rise, but the wound in his side was a beast.

"Clay, we don't have time for this!" D-Con bellowed, diving back down behind the sand to reload. "I'll cover you. Now you grab your ass, and you run with it. Now! Don't look back and don't stop for me!"

* * *

 **A/N:** How I missed these two character duos. I always love writing Ilya and Danse together (I'm writing this out after already having written half of the next chapter with them...), but I hadn't realised how much I missed Deacon and Clay together.

With Clay's shameless attraction to nearly everyone around him, it wasn't something I originally intended to happen. A few people had wondered if he was bi and had the hots for Maxson, and expressed that they would be interested to see that play out. Originally I hadn't intended it to come off that way. He is just a very impressionable guy who admires strength. But then when I thought more on it, I figured it would be interesting/funny/cute/sexually inclusive/however you choose to look at it, if he was actually smitten with the steaming hot man-meat running across this fic. (In my head I pictured hunks of meat with legs, is that weird?) I mean, c'mon how can you blame him? :P

I don't have much experience with the LGBT community and if there are any rules around writing it, so please forgive me if I end up being offensive and coming across as naive. That's definitely not my intention!


	75. Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear

_Forewarning: Fluffy as fuck, with a rich seasoning of angst and a healthy dash of spicy smut._

* * *

 **Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear**

* * *

The woman Danse had devoted his entire existence to was in ruins in his arms, her tremulous body a fragile thing against his. He kissed at her forehead and nuzzled into her familiar-smelling hair, but her thin gasps of misery in his chest were puncturing his heart, the whimpers now only the wet dregs of the brutal letting of despair from earlier.

At first, he had felt a sense of relief that she was finally letting go of her emotions, finally coming to him for help, letting him in. Just like he had with her. He thought back to the last time she had broken down before him, that night out in the cabin when she had told him about her son's fate with the Institute. He remembered how restricted he had felt to comfort her as her commanding officer. Now, he could comfort her the way he had desired to back then, unmitigated with all the affection his heart yearned to give.

But now, witnessing the depth of her anguish, he regretted that feeling of relief. Just holding her body, he could feel that she had lost weight again. Her cheeks appeared to have subtly hollowed out again, too.

"Shh. It's gonna be alright," he soothed into her hair, stroking the dark feathery strands in his calloused fingers. "I've got you. I'm here for you. Whatever you need, I'll make it happen."

Ilya gripped onto him harder. "I can't do this, Danse," she lamented into his chest, tiny sobs still hassling her body. "They're dead because of me. I failed them, I failed _you_. I'm not cut out for this. I'm just a soldier."

"You didn't fail them, none of this was your fault, and you have _not_ failed me. You could never fail me. Listen to me." He gently took her face in his fingers and raised it until she was forced to look at him, stained and bloated with misery. "You are so much more than just a soldier. Think of all the good you've done since coming out of that vault. You change people's lives everywhere you go, always eager to help despite having your own problems. You risked your life to save mine. The bravery you showed by standing up to Maxson on my behalf will never be forgotten. You've done so much more for countless others out there, and I can't even imagine what else you accomplished before we even met."

She was listening to his words with an intensive desperation, clinging onto them for dear life, but there was a futile vale to her eyes that told him she wasn't soaking it in, wasn't truly believing him. It was like her inner flame was snuffed out. And he loved that flame.

Danse took a firmer hold of her wet face and hauled from all his years of experience as a paladin, supporting his soldiers and bolstering their resolves when the world seemed to be falling down around them. She was and always would be _his_ soldier.

"You're going to get through this, even if I have to carry you through it, because you're tough, soldier. You can't be a tough person without overcoming a tough time, and you're going to come out the other side of this an even tougher person, just like you always do."

A sob wracked her body, but she gripped at the hands holding her face up, like she was in danger of falling and his hands were her only hope. Good, she was fighting for survival.

Danse softened his tone and relinquished hold of her face to dash at the rogue tears tumbling down her cheeks. "You have a vision for this world, with the ambition and passion to chase it down. Not everyone has that, and yours is great enough to rival that of Maxson's. He is where he is today not just because of his heritage, but because of his vision and his passion, and its carried him through a world of hardships, just like yours will. But you're not alone, we're in this together, and I'll be right at your side ready to catch you and carry you through the worst of it.

"You should hear how those freed slaves talk of you, calling you their immortal guardian, their saviour, some even think you're a goddess that was born in the fires of the apocalypse. You've become a symbol, and I've never met anyone like you in my life."

All of it was true and unrehearsed, a freeflow of his depiction of her. He could say so much more, wanted to, but she wasn't in a state to listen to his emotional drivel right now.

Her sobs slacked off a little, her fingers playing at the damp collar of his t-shirt, and her eyes shifted to his lips and back to his eyes in a gloss of wet lashes. He kissed her tenderly, healingly, revelling in the plush touch of her wet lips, tucking some of her hair behind an ear.

Her sobs were breathy whispers on his lips as he withdrew, but the moment he opened his eyes, she was collapsing again, a single tear held hostage now slipping free.

"I lost your holotags," she whimpered anew, unable to look him in the eye as her fingers played more erratically at his shirt. The frown lines in her forehead were quivering as she tried to hold in an onslaught of emotion. "When the raiders caught me—" she swallowed and tried to solidify her voice "—they pulled me out of my power armour and... pulled me back into the cave..."

Danse listened studiously, not daring to move a muscle, hurting at how abandoned her eyes were as they focused on his rumpled shirt in her hands.

"Their hands were all over me," she pushed on, lip snarling up in disgust. "There were so many of them. Touching me... everywhere..."

Rage lay like a savage beast in Danse's heart, the need to protect her from her memories flaring in him like a superheated laser, but the shadow of trauma in Ilya's eyes quieted the beast. She went to speak again, words catching in her throat, and Danse moved his hand off her waist and to her cheekbone, partly out of respect, partly to comfort her.

"It's alright," he consoled her. "Take your time."

"They were ripping my jumpsuit, with their bare nails. Sharpened, like claws. They scratched my skin and licked the blood, and they just laughed as I screamed." She swallowed again and shuddered against him, her fingers going still now, eyes wide and unseeing. "One of them ripped open my jumpsuit at the chest. Put his hands on me." She gestured faintly to her breast, but Danse understood. And he was livid inside, his breath increasing enough to cause Ilya's body to move with the rise of fall of his chest, but he tamped it down as her face crumpled on a squeeze of tears. "That's when I lost your holotags."

"Ilya." Danse thumbed away another tear. "I don't care about the holotags." She shook her head in guilt, even as he implored her in a strong whisper. "They're just worthless mementos. They mean nothing to me next to your welfare." When he tried to guide her face back up to his again she pulled her chin free, lip quivering in a struggle to stem her tears. "Ilya," he pained, "I won't ever let them get their hands on you again. From now on, I'll be right at your side no matter what. I promise you."

Ilya blinked out quick tears and nodded into his chest. "I went to look for them. In the cave," she spoke, took a solid breath, looked him in the eye, but her facade was porous. "They weren't there. I think the Brotherhood found them."

He felt himself blanching against a considerable effort not to. He thought for a moment, eyes involuntarily dipping down to the sallow bruising across her neck. "If you're confronted about them, we could just go with the story that you were wearing them as a reminder not to trust anyone, even your friends."

Ilya looked at him sadly with her resplendent eyes, then she palmed his jaw and caressed the overgrown hair on his cheek with her thumb. "I'll tell them the truth, that I was wearing them because I missed an old friend."

He wanted to kiss her again, smother her in kisses, but he had to stay rational. "That won't go down well with many in the ranks."

She scoffed tearily. "I don't care what they think. Synth or not, you were my commanding officer and my friend, and I won't keep on pretending like killing you didn't bother me. If they don't like it they can fuck themselves with a steel flag bearer."

He tried not to grin. Her brazenness always made him fear for her future in the Brotherhood. But, oddly enough, right now, he was proud of her brazenness. He sent attentive fingers to her neckline, barely grazing the skin. "Who did this to you?" he demanded softly, conscious of the way the pores in her facade cracked a little. "I know the bruising was here before the battle, so who hurt you? Did Maxson do this to you?"

There was a small quirk of her black brow before she looked back down to her fingers. "No. I'm sure he'd like to take credit for it, but this wasn't his."

She didn't elaborate, so Danse pushed. "I couldn't help but notice he had quite an impressive shiner on his nose. Like it had been broken and reset." She still wouldn't look at him. "Ilya," he summoned her honesty like a tutor would their misbehaving student.

"Fine," she sighed with a sniff and a shrug. "It was me. But he deserved it."

" _Ilya._ " Danse fought to keep his tone level. "You attacked him? What happened?"

"I slapped him. And punched him. Then headbutted him."

His eyebrows had risen with each confession. "You _headbutted_ Elder Maxson?"

A secret smile dared to curl at the corner of her mouth, but she still refused to look up at him. Danse was at a loss. Part of him wanted to scold her and shake her, and part of him wanted to praise her and ask how it had felt.

"He didn't hurt me back," she eventually spoke, a small frown carving between her brows. "I wanted him to, but he wouldn't."

Disturbed by that, Danse felt his face twinge with confusion at the faraway creature resting before his face. "Why would you want him to hurt you?" It came out more accusatory than he'd meant it to.

Ilya closed her eyes for a moment, a gesture of shame. "To push him, make him dishonour himself."

Danse felt in his gut that there was more to it than that, more she wasn't telling him, but there was no forcing it from her. "You need to stop provoking him, Ilya. One of these days, he really will hurt you." He tipped her chin up, and this time she didn't resist him. "And I don't know what I'm capable of doing to him if he does hurt you."

Ilya's eyes shone at him and planed downward in remorse. She took his hand from her chin to bring it to her mouth, where her moist lips buried a kiss into his knuckles. "I'm sorry," she trembled, rubbing her lips across the joints in his fingers in a sensual, affectionate way that had him captivated. She dwelled back over his knuckles a moment, eyes closed to savour the feel of his roughened skin on her soft lips, then she pressed his hand back to her cheek and held it there firmly, cradling it in her own two hands. "I'm so sorry, Danse. I'm making things worse for you. I didn't mean to make you worry."

"I'm always going to worry," he confessed, rubbing his thumb on her warm cheek. She nabbed it and brought it down to her lips to kiss at again, and Danse couldn't help himself as a smile took control of his lips. His heart soared with the unaccustomed amount of affection she was giving him, like a smitten cat aboard the Prydwen. He had never experienced anything like it before, every petite motion and gesture full of emotion and meaning. It was as if she was bursting with so much of it that she couldn't express it enough. It made him giddy to think about, and caused his protective instinct to bloom to even greater heights.

"So tell me who hurt you." He wasn't going to drop it.

The dark spread of her lashes were still spiked with tears as she searched for words in the material of his shirt. She conjured a sigh. "Groves."

"Star Paladin Groves?"

She nodded, her jaw sharpening. "She caught Maxson and I wrestling in his quarters and dragged me below deck to have a private word. This was the result." She gestured halfheartedly to her neck. "But everyone else has been adding their mark, too. Does my neck have a sign on it saying 'feel free to abuse me!'" A bitter scoff poured from her.

"This is no laughing matter," Danse chided her unfazed humour. "You speak of all this as if its just petty drama, just fun and games. Well it's not, Ilya. Groves had no right to harm you like that, and if you had reported it, she could have been seriously reprimanded or worse. But you _assaulted_ the _elder._ Right after I implored you not to antagonise him and to give your best effort at being civil with him. This schism between the pair of you has been affecting the morale of the alliance, and I don't care if it's over me or not, you're both adults, not hormonal teenagers. Don't you understand the possible repercussions of what you did? He could have had you executed, Ilya. Would it have been worth it then? To have secured your own death warrant just to land a solid punch to his face?"

"Yes," she hissed in exasperation, then sighed with sudden frustration and sat up, streaming her fingers up through her hair and raking her nails into her scalp.

Danse glared a moment, watching the sinewy muscles of her back play, then followed her up. He knew she hadn't meant that, it was just her way of retaliating against his rap. He carefully placed a hand on her bare shoulder. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have spoken to you like that, it was unfair of me."

"No, _I'm_ sorry." She twisted back at him, resting her temple in her fist with elbow propped on knee. "You're right. I've been playing with fire, making stupid choices." She glanced off into the tent wall. "Sometimes it's like I don't even know who I am any more."

Danse pondered her with an anxious frown. There was that glimpse of the darkness in her that he had been fearing for so long now. Something possessing, something deep in her head that had seeded long ago and was only growing heavier. He saw it in the shadow of her sapphire gaze as she stared at nothing, like she was lost in an abyss and was only here with him on the edge of herself. Resurfaced before him, he wasn't sure how to approach it, how to even think of it. He squeezed at her shoulder. "I know who you are."

She came back to him from the edge and her eyes flitted to him warmly.

"You're my everything. And without you, I'd be nothing."

Her sad smile returned and she fell back into him between his propped legs, giving him the softest, most heart-warming kiss they had shared yet. Kissing her was like nothing he'd ever imagined it to be, and he still wasn't used to the angelic sensation of her supple lips on his. He wasn't a very versed man in the art of kissing, and only had those few stolen experiences with the girl back in Rivet City to draw from, but with Ilya, everything came naturally to him, as if their ineffable bond guided them. Still, he fully expected they had a few clumsy moments yet to come... and that thought threatened to excite him.

His lips mourned hers when she withdrew, and he glided his hand beneath her hair to caress her jawline, holding her gaze deeply in his. It sent a cloud of warmth straight to his chest to see the adoring look in her eyes as she held his gaze just as deeply. For reasons that were still unfathomable to him, she really did care very deeply for him, a synth. Steel, she was a beautiful woman, in every sense possible. And she was _his_.

"You do know how beautiful you are, don't you?"

Ilya just tittered self-consciously, but her eyes crinkled a smile back at him. "You can talk, handsome."

He tittered self-consciously, too. Then they both just looked at each other and laughed at how equally pathetic they were. She leaned in again to bop her nose playfully against his, and he captured her close for good by buckling his arms around her. Danse liked having her as close as possible to him, and was developing a strong liking to snatching her up at his will.

Then, like an imbecile, he remembered her recount of her sexual assault not moments ago, and his arms snapped open to release her. "I-I'm sorry," he stumbled out, mortified with himself. "I had no right to just grab you like that."

"No, please." Ilya shocked him by grabbing back for his hands and belting his arms back around her. "I'm all yours, and only yours. You have the right to grab me whenever you want, paladin."

Her silken tone on the end of that sentence caused a mild stir in his loins, but he was still tentative. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, Danse. There's nowhere I feel safer than in your arms." Ilya's sincere face then grinned knowingly at him as she found herself enwrapped tightly without hope of escape, and she surrendered by nuzzling into his furred neck and nipping at his jaw. He decided he could get used to this level of intimacy very quickly.

He delicately kissed the back of her neck, plotting a trailing course that moved over her bruised terrain slowly, delighting in her shiver. "Back in the Brotherhood, I used to try to conceal my feelings for you by citing off as much of the Brotherhood's laws and history as I could think up. Whenever I was feeling nervous around you, I would play up my authority and... well, try my best to be intimidating, I suppose."

"I know," Ilya quipped simply. At his stunned face, she smirked roguishly.

"You... you knew?"

"You're not as subtle as you think you are, Paladin Danse."

Well, now he just felt a fool. "Hmm. I see I need to reassess my tactics a little."

Ilya seemed to find that very amusing and buried a spluttered chuckle into his neck. He loved the feel of her laughter and breath pressed into his skin in warm, soft bursts, and wished for her never to stop. But when she did and propped her head back on his shoulder to gaze up at him, her eyes were no longer shadowed by grief, but were sparkling sapphire gems.

"You do know how adorable you are, don't you?" she mimicked his earlier words.

"Adorable?" He made a grumbling sound. "Well, alright then. Just don't use that word around the others."

She just chuckled again and kissed at his neck, forcing a smile from him.

"My point being," Danse continued, while Ilya settled back down from nibbling at him, "Is that I never thought there was room for anything in my life besides the Brotherhood. I'm glad I was wrong."

Ilya settled down completely then. Her frisky mood was shifted into a more sobered one, and her gaze was an alluring snare. "I'm glad you were wrong, too."

Her gaze drew him in, and their kiss was a long, sensuous lock that made him dizzy with vertigo and an almost painful swelling of emotion. When their lips unlocked, her deft hands glided up the borders of his face.

"Tell me about you. The PTSD. How have you been feeling?"

She had caught him off guard, and he balked a bit. "It's... I've been fine. You shouldn't worry about me, you've been through enough."

Her smile was wan. "So have you, but you worry about me. It's my turn. Let me worry."

Her fingers were coaxing him with tiny, loving strokes, and her eyes were imploring points of light that further coaxed. He couldn't help feeling shameful to dump his repertoire of enduring miseries and woes on her after everything she had just been through.

"I haven't had any episodes since you've been gone," he managed. There had been near-misses and the odd nightmare, but nothing concrete enough to call a full-blown episode of flashbacks and anxiety attacks. He considered himself lucky, because if he had been seized by a flashback, he wasn't so sure he would've been able to come through it in one coherent piece without her.

"And the nightmares?" she coaxed next.

"They've been... tolerable. I have the tent to myself, and I don't think any of the others have become aware of how bad it gets."

His words seemed to hurt her, sympathy striking deep into her already drawn features. "I'm sorry you've had to go through that alone. I did everything I could to get off the Prydwen, save from plotting a prison break. Every night I wished I could be down here with you."

"Every night I wished I could be up there with you," he parried her, voice a low drum. He observed as it caused her pupils to bloom out like blackholes reaching to swallow him whole. He wanted nothing more than to get lost in them, lost in her, but given her recent trauma, his advances would be improper and disrespectful.

But _steel_ was it a painful dilemma in his soul.

Ilya played her fingertips along his sideburns. "So the others know, about you being a synth."

Danse nodded. "Deacon convinced me that telling them was in my best interest."

"He can be a convincing little shit, can't he?"

A small chuckle erupted from him. "Yes, he can. They surprised me with how well they all took the news, and with how accepting they were. Especially Garvey. He and I never saw eye-to-eye with the Minutemen, but now he seems more willing to take my advice. Which is a little odd, considering I'm a synth. I would have thought he'd be suspicious that I was working for the Institute in weakening the Minutemen's effectiveness... Nick Valentine even called me 'son,' one time when we were travelling through the Boston city ruins, which was... bizarre."

Ilya only smiled contently as she listened.

"But it's Hancock that's been troubling me the most out of all of them."

Ilya was instantly ruffled, limbs making to break from him in order to reach the tent flap. "Okay, where is he. I'll sort him out for you. I don't have time for this bullshit and he needs to pull his fucking head in."

Danse gripped onto her to keep her in place. "Just hold up," he was almost amused by her protectiveness. "I don't mean trouble in the bad sense." She faced him again with a hovering curiosity. "Don't get me wrong, he's been his usual vexing self, but he appears to have made it a task for himself to convince me that my synth identity makes us more similar than dissimilar. Albeit in a very antagonising way," he added bitterly.

Ilya settled back down between his legs, thoughtful. "You don't think of that as insulting, that he's trying to relate to you?" Her tone was cautious with him.

"I hadn't thought of it in that way," Danse admitted, now thoughtful himself. "Though being a synth and being a ghoul are two very different things."

"Different, but relatable." Ilya smiled at him, not-so-secretly pleased with the outcome. "I'm glad to hear you two hotheads have been playing nice instead of ripping each others' heads off while I've been gone."

"Well, there's been _some_ ripping, but nothing's come off yet, so that's a good sign."

With an amused nod, Ilya's features then dropped into solemn lines. "Nick told me about how the Brotherhood took you in to speak with Maxson. How they treated you."

"It was nothing I couldn't handle," he quick-fired stoically, a little jarred by her change of direction, but Ilya evidently felt him tense up with defensiveness and he found himself facing a stern beauty.

"Hey, don't act like it doesn't bother you."

He grew a faraway scowl and turned his face aside, trying to search the tent flap for an escape route. She shouldn't be concerning herself with this.

Firm, nurturing hands guided his face back toward empathic blue eyes. "Did they hurt you?"

"No, they didn't. Though I'm sure they would have liked to if Maxson hadn't kept control of the situation."

Her lips twitched with consideration. "What did he want with you?"

Danse thought for a moment, losing his gaze in the tent flap again. "Honestly, I still don't know exactly what he wanted. It may have been down to paranoia on my part, but I got the indelible feeling he knew it was me beneath the helmet, or at least he had a strong suspicion. He could have easily demanded I remove my helmet, yet he chose not to. So... if he did suspect me, then he's decided to sit on it for now. And I don't like the prospect of that."

Ilya had paled slightly, deeply troubled by this. "This is why I didn't want you to follow me out here," she said in a whisper volume.

"I would have followed you to the ends of the earth, you know that."

She acquiesced with silence, hand pressing to his chest with lamenting affection. "You think he's playing for leverage? To use you against me if I turn on him or get in his way?"

Danse scowled at the thought. "I dread to think of it ever coming to that. But he gave us one chance, Ilya. We've thrown that back in his face, and I dishonoured my vow to him to keep away from the Brotherhood. If he knows it's me, then... then that makes him a very dangerous man." Ilya nodded with grim understanding. "But I have no doubt in my mind that he threatened me over your safety. He was very clear-cut about that."

"He what?" Her shock was clear, frowning a hard cleft between her brows.

"He seemed very concerned with your safety in my charge. But it was more than a simple distrust for my abilities, it was of a personal nature."

"What do you mean?" Her voice was wary.

"It's obvious he cares for you, on more than just a professional level." Danse prepared himself to suppress any hints of jealousy, but the ugly emotion had crept up on him without preamble. "Perhaps I'm overthinking it, but have the two of you somehow managed to form a... personal connection, of sorts? Something that would have driven him to act so hostilely."

Her eyes evaded his in a flit, and that alone didn't bode well. But then, why, he thought to himself? Ilya and Arthur had been working together closely for months now, they shared the Brotherhood's vision even if their methods were different, and were bound to form a deeper understanding of each other, which could possibly lead to an affinity. He had no place to judge her on that, yet here he was.

Ilya was roused with discomfort, her thumbnail going to her lip. She untied the noose of his arms from around her and then shifted herself over on the sleeping roll, separating herself from him. Danse's innards went cold with dread, and his entire digestive system felt as though it had ground to a halt. He waited while she deliberated.

"Maxson kissed me."

Those words wouldn't chug through his digestion. Danse was ill-equipped for such a bombshell, and it shook him just like the shellshock of a flashback. "He kissed you?" A dash of anger tugged his brow, and that savage beast of rage in his chest stirred.

Ilya wore a complex expression. Her gaze strayed to her fingers as they kneaded. "I... I let him... and I almost kissed him back."

These words, they plunged a cold shard into his heart. He sat in silence as the tent walls lightly rustled in the wind. The image, of Arthur kissing her, putting his hands on her, it kept playing over in his head, a sardonic replay to mock him.

Was this another of fate's twisted jokes at his expense? He was a synth. Arthur was a man. Down in the moribund hollows of that bunker, he had told himself that he didn't deserve her, that she deserved better, she deserved a man, a man like Arthur.

"I don't even understand what happened," Ilya was deploring, her hand shaking feverishly as her fingers picked at her lower lip. "One second we were fighting, the next..." her eyes sought his, wild and rimmed with crimson. "I don't know why I let it happen. I don't feel anything for him, it's just this tension between us and its turned into this... twisted fucking game that we took too far. I hate him. He hates me. I want to kill him in cold blood and he wants to strangle the life out of me."

Danse's head was gyrating. Perhaps she meant that, or perhaps she was in denial. That esoteric thing that he felt lurking between the two of them wasn't just one-sided with Arthur, he felt it with Ilya, too. Like deep in her, somewhere, somehow, she cared for the other man, and was in touch with an untouched part of him that no one could gain access to. Maybe she wasn't even aware of it.

His memory took him back to the old folds of his friendship with the elder. The meeting on the observation bridge that cloudy day, when they had discussed their thoughts on Ilya's agenda, just like she and himself had done moments ago on Arthur's agenda. Then they had slipped into an informal, almost brotherly heart-to-heart.

 _Birds of a feather..._

But that time seemed remote and glassy now. Now, they were rivals. Vying for one woman.

"Danse..." Shoals of pain rippled Ilya's features as she looked to him searchingly. "Please, Danse. I'm sorry I did this. Please say something." Her hand stirred at her side, an unconscious tell to her want to reach for him, but she didn't.

Danse couldn't look at her. He looked instead to her hand, then his resting unfilled at his side. They were both gazing at their empty hands as the silence decayed the air in the tent.

No.

He was tired of Maxson driving a wedge between them, wittingly or unwittingly. The elder was their one, undying obstacle threatening to tear them apart, cropping up again and again, and unless it was something Ilya wanted or needed, Danse wasn't going to let it happen. Not while he still drew breath.

He reached for her hand, and she inhaled sharply with surprise. Filling his fingers with hers, he at once felt whole again, home. He looked up, found her eyes. They were swimming, on the precipice, hope and fear fluctuating behind them.

He spoke wilfully. "Thank you for being honest with me, I realise that must have been difficult." He took a second to arrange his thoughts. "You and Arthur share a connection that I never fully understood. You both share a vision for the future, you're both driven by purposes greater than yourselves, you're both powerful leaders that care for your people, and you once saw eye-to-eye with the Brotherhood's ethos. But, more importantly, you both share the same burden of this war. That alone would draw two people together against impossible odds." Ilya was shaking her head, but he pushed on. "I've never known Maxson to pursue a woman, it would have been considered improper in his position and in times of constant war, but he obviously sees something in you, probably the very same thing I see, and I can't fault him that. Even still, he shouldn't have done what he did. You're in a vulnerable state right now and he took advantage. He should have known better, and I don't blame you."

"Danse, you should hate me." She was still shaking her head in disbelief, even as he lightly pulled her nearer. She resisted, adamant in her guilt.

"I don't think it's possible that I could ever hate you, Ilya," he told her frankly. "We're two very different people, we've had our difficulties, and we still do. You're impulsive and I'm cautious. I could sit here and list off a multitude of differences between us. But I trust you, and if this thing between you and Maxson is just a mutual attraction, and nothing more, then I believe you, and I'm not going to let you go without a fight. Whatever caused our fates to intertwine would never let them unravel."

Ilya attempted to corral her tears, but she failed in thin rivers as they flowed over trembling lips. Danse wondered how she still had enough fluid in her body to summon tears. The irrelevant thought vanished as Ilya finally moved herself nearer by his bidding, wary of his forgiveness, his acceptance, sliding herself back to him as though he were an unapproachable enigma. Then she took his face between unsteady hands. She was still frowning at him, mildly shaking her head.

"You're an extraordinary man, Danse. And I don't deserve you."

"I believe we've been over this before, and you deserve far better than me."

She didn't smile. In fact she was still measuring him in disbelief. "I think we've come to an impasse," she said smartly before wrapping her arms around his neck to embrace him. Danse returned her embrace as tightly as he dared, wrapping his arms around her lithe torso, cherishing her anew.

He still felt in a state of shellshock, and he was pretty sure he was trembling, too, but his forgiveness just felt right. Later, when he would be able to fully process the implications of Ilya's and Arthur's newfound intimacy, he would be raided with jealousy and paranoia, probably self-insecurities, too. But he would deal with it nonetheless. She was worth all of it. She was his purpose, for as long as she wanted him.

After a timeless existence in their fragile bliss, when he felt as though he was about to doze into an upright sleep with Ilya in his arms, Danse hummed himself back to life. Ilya didn't stir, her head snugly balanced over his shoulder, and he wondered if she had dozed off too.

"Hey," he roused gently. "I have something to show you. A surprise."

There was a mumble over his shoulder, and she pulled back to look at him, eyes glazed. "Danse," she started, a hint of sleepy amusement in her tone. "Really? You don't need to prove yourself to me."

He cocked a brow at her. "Hm? What? N-No, not that."

She choked on a laugh and gave him a sidelong look.

 _I have a primed payload in my pants..._ The witless jest came back to haunt him at the worst possible time. He cleared his throat helplessly. "Well, I mean, there is that... but no! That's not what I was implying..." Steel, he was burning up. What was he, a spineless squire?

Ilya was just smiling fondly at him now. Enjoying herself. Not at all jumping to rescue him from himself. The rascal.

With a pout, Danse picked her up off him by the waist and plopped her down on the sleeping roll. She let out a surprised chuckle at his manhandling of her. "Stay," he commanded, then unzipped the tent flap and poked his head out. He ignored the feel of Ilya lightly smacking his rear in retaliation.

The camp was empty. He reached back for his helmet, just to be safe, and then cautiously stepped out. The sky was smudged with maroon clouds, casting a sunset glow over the camp, but there was not a soul in sight. Though evidence of recent habitation lay scattered about. The banked fire, stained coffee cups, ashtrays, ammo boxes in the midsts of being sorted, clothes and rags hung out on makeshift lines to dry, the armour station piled with materials, weapons in need of maintenance. He noticed two box crates positioned on either side of a jury-rigged bench, and suspected it was an arm wrestling station. It wasn't there earlier. They constructed that while he and Ilya were in the tent?

Did they seriously have nothing better to do with their time?

Danse stopped himself from bristling. At least they appeared to have high-tailed it from the camp and given the two of them some space. That was... considerate of them.

"Huh, it appears we have the camp to ourselves," he called over to Ilya from his crouch at the campfire. He heard a rustle and looked back to see her head peek out tentatively through the flap. "The coast is clear, soldier. Come on out," he tried more playfully.

She sent a scouting glance around the campsite but wouldn't budge. Probably too embarrassed after breaking down in front of the others. He should have gotten her inside the tent quicker. Instead, she settled for just watching him from the tent opening, propping her hand under her jaw.

Danse stoked the fire back to life, adding more kindling and dried wood, then grabbed a small gobbet of ashroot and crumbled it in his hand. He caught the ash in a small bowl and then worked a stone pestle over it to grind it finely. Peeking back, he saw that Ilya was still watching, her eyes intently following his every move. She grinned impishly at him, and he grinned back.

When he was satisfied with the brew, he poured the coffee into a cup and brought it over to her, kneeling down in order to pass it over. "We make it with a root called ashroot. Taste it. I think you'll find you like it."

Ilya eyed him suspiciously before bringing the hot cup of coffee to her lips. She sipped, considered, then beamed one of her gorgeous smiles at him.

"I like it."

"Told you you would."

She took another experimental sip. "Ashroot. Is that native?"

"Come on, I'll show you." He offered her a hand and she took it without reluctance, allowing him to pull her out of the tent. Her legs appeared to wobble a little and she felt a bit willowy in his hand, probably just tired and dehydrated. He needed to get her to eat something, too.

They perched down together at the crackling campfire and Danse demonstrated the ashroot to Ilya, how it crumbled like dust in his hand. She looked fascinated, so he transferred the remainder of the root into her smaller hand.

"You try. Catch the ashes in the bowl."

She had to apply a little more force than he did, but she succeeded. "Makes sense that it's called ashroot," she commented as her finger stirred at the contents in the bowl. "Do you know why it crumbles so easily?"

"Clay-Crawler explained that once the root is cut from the bulb it can't survive the radiation. The cells must begin to break down at a rapid rate. I'm guessing we're not getting much nutritional value from drinking this."

"I don't know about you, but I don't drink coffee for it's nutrition," Ilya sassed, and he shrugged in agreement.

He supervised her as she ground up the root with the pestle and then poured the fine coffee grinds into a rag they had designated for brewing. He directed her to slowly pour the boiled water through the rag and into the coffee pot, filtering through the flavour, which she did with finesse. Then he advised her to squeeze out the remaining moisture from the rag in order to extract the most flavour possible before throwing the grinds to waste.

"You can use coffee grinds to fertilise gardens, you know?" Ilya informed.

"Is that so? We'll have to commission Clay-Crawler with his very own nursery garden, then. That should keep him busy."

"That's not actually a bad idea. But you know what's an even better idea?"

Danse had a gut feeling he knew where this was going, and tried his best to pretend he wasn't listening, fiddling with cleaning the rims of their coffee cups.

Ilya angled her head to catch his eye. "If you ran him through some basic training."

It elicited a deep sigh from him. "You know, my intention for keeping him busy was so he would keep away from me. I can't think of anything worse than working with him on a daily basis."

"You're being dramatic."

"I'm being cautious."

"There's that word again. Tell me how letting our trigger-happy raider, who's first instinct when I opened my weapon's cache to him was to grab for the fat-man launcher, go untrained is being cautious?"

He fixed her with a serious eye. "Because if I had to put up with that walking disaster for even one training session, you'd have much more to worry about than him getting his hands on a nuke launcher."

Ilya cracked at his straight-face and giggled into his shoulder. "You're a piece of work, Deadskull."

Danse allowed himself a proud grin as she then nestled up and leaned against him. He pondered on her choice of call sign for him as he poured their black coffee into their cups. She had taken it from the creature he had slain, but she had obviously given it some thought before Maxson had demanded his name from her. It was coincidentally fitting, given he was considered dead by the Brotherhood, and being a synth, one could say he was dead within his skull, devoid of real emotion. It could be considered a derogatory epithet, given the context, but he figured Ilya had meant it more as a punchy insult to the Brotherhood. In a way of throwing their words back at them. That was her style of snark, after all.

And he had developed a strong liking to her style of snark over the course of their time operating together. He would never tell her that, however. It would only serve to encourage her, and she could be cringingly embarrassing at times.

They sipped at their coffee at the campfire, a lithe breeze scattering golden flecks of fire to freckle the sun as it set in a vibrant stretch of coral. Ilya had laced her fingers with Danse's, intermittently kissing at the skin of his arm as she rested on his shoulder. She made him nervous and excited all tightly wrapped up in one, his attention piqued by each movement she made, no matter how subtle. Every time she stirred to deposit her affections on him, his heart would race in his chest, priming him for an unfamiliar offload of emotions. As they sat under the canopy of the dusk sky, watching the lilt of the sun, he felt at a loss for a topic of discussion. There was so much they could talk of, from how her mental health was, how she was feeling about her son, her husband and how their relationship affected her grief, if she were still having her nightmares, but for now all of that could be placed on the back-burner. They had been through enough heavy talks for one day.

Their silence was one of utter comfort, Danse realised after a time. They were just bathing, recuperating. He thought the moment with her couldn't be more perfect and was soaking it up like a lifeform deprived of light.

"It's kinda cinnamon-y, with a kick to it. What plant is the ashroot from?" Ilya asked without warning, swirling the rich liquid in her cup with a small frown of curiosity. He wasn't sure which one of them loved coffee more, but she seemed to have a leg up on him with her avid interest in the root.

He thought on her question a moment, trying to recall. "I'm not sure. You'll have to enquire with Clay-Crawler. I haven't paid much attention to what the scribes discover on the flora and fauna in this desert, I've been more preoccupied with the field ops the Brotherhood's been running. I admit it's more than a little frustrating not knowing what's going on around me."

"I know the feeling," she responded flatly, then fell silent again.

But it was his own response that was troubling Danse. He realised he had come across too formal and impersonal, blabbering on about the Brotherhood like he always did, talking shop while they were having an intimate moment in the sunset. He sighed. "Strange. I've been alone for so long, I don't even know how to act around you."

Ilya regarded him in a stunned gaze, lips slightly parted as she digested his words. Then they curled into a soothing smile. "Just be you. I don't want you to change who you are for me, I just want you to be Danse."

He frowned thoughtfully as he absorbed that. Ilya gently pulled him down to her lips to assure him, her kiss like a gossamer whisper that he actually wondered on its reality.

"But the real Danse," she added between their kiss, "not the Brotherhood Danse."

He chuckled softly and snatched up one more kiss, then grew apologetic. "You know that will always be a part of me, though."

Her smile remained warm, though some of the warmth fled her eyes. "I know." She rested an elbow up on his shoulder and fondly ran her fingers through his hairline with her perched arm. Her ruminations on him were written in the intensity she carried so potently on her surface, blue eyes an enriched indigo in the dusk sun, enchanting him with their vivid depths. "A piece of you will always be with the Brotherhood, and maybe one day they'll be worthy of you." Her smile turned brave, unwavering. "But it doesn't change the way I feel about you."

Danse caught that right in the centre of his chest, giving his heart a saturated beat. He touched her face gingerly. "You really are an endangered species in this world, Ilya."

Her eyes radiated with mischief. "Let's be endangered together, then."

"Hmm. I get the glamour of it, but I think the novelty would wear off pretty fast."

"Now you're just being a pessimist. Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I lost it the day I took you under my wing and then realised too late that you had enough sense of adventure for the both of us."

Ilya simpered at him and shook her head. When she recollected herself, she curled a gentle look his way. "Have you ever been with a woman, Danse?"

Her question caught him off guard yet again, though it shouldn't have, given his earlier confession of having been alone for so long. "Was it that obvious?" With a pensive sigh, he brought himself to look her in the eye. "No. That is, not... all the way, for lack of a better way of putting it."

Ilya nodded patiently, her expression full of warmth and understanding, but even so, Danse found it difficult to maintain eye contact and dipped his gaze down to his coffee.

"There was a girl back in Rivet City that Cutler and I both shared a liking for. We never got up in arms over her, but we did make a competition out of winning her affection." He grew a faraway smile at the memory of their antics. "Her name was Sienna. She was a little older than Cutler and I, but she made the most of our attention and she seemed to be flattered, even by our questionable courtship attempts..." He heard Ilya chuckle lightly, and it encouraged him to continue. "Being young and imaginative, I came up with the bright idea of wooing Sienna with poetry."

"Poetry," Ilya mused quietly, a secretive grin hinting at the corners of her mouth. "You do come out with some inspirational, sweeping lines every now and then to keep me on my toes with how your mind works."

Danse angled a tolerant look at her. "There's some backstory to this, so keep quiet."

Ilya snorted a laugh.

"Growing up an orphan on the streets, I hadn't had any formal education and I was always self-conscious about that. I didn't like being treated like an invalid. Like I didn't understand the world around me the way the other kids who grew up in Rivet City did. So, being a junk merchant, I eventually got my hands on a thesaurus-and-dictionary-in-one while I was scavenging the ruins."

A small, strangled sound came from Ilya, and when he looked at her she was burying her mouth in her fist, like she really wanted to say something. He didn't let her.

"I spent days dissecting that book, until finally I felt confident enough with my diction that I wrote Sienna my poem in one sitting. I don't recall what I wrote, something mushy about love and a boy and girl on a sinking boat frozen in time. You can imagine where I got the setting from."

"You told me Rivet City was a beached aircraft carrier," Ilya supplied.

Danse nodded abashedly. "She skimmed over the poem, took one look at me, and laughed in my face. I was traumatised, as you can imagine. But instead of jumping overboard to escape my embarrassment, Sienna took me by the hand, whispered in my ear 'you win' and pulled me to her room. That night, I learned a lot more than I ever did in that thesaurus and dictionary."

Ilya was wearing a fond grin and her eyes were lustrous with amusement. "So an older woman gave you a few tips and tricks. Now it all makes sense." A single eyebrow made a suggestive arch. "But she didn't take you the whole mile?"

"Well, that's where Cutler came in."

"Oh! Now he spills the beans. So the three of you—?"

"What? No!" Danse gave her a mock scowl. "Would you just stop interrupting and let me finish?"

"Okay, okay, sorry."

"So one night, Sienna invited me down to the Muddy Rudder, which was a dank, watered-down bar on the lower deck of the ship. For a couple of young adults looking for a night of fun, however, it was perfect. So I show up, and I find Sienna already waiting at the bar, with Cutler beside her, his arm around her waist. Being high on life with my very first girlfriend, I wasn't about to let her slip away, not even to my best friend. I waltzed right up to Cutler, tapped him on the shoulder, and made a show of myself telling him where to stick it. He looked at me like I was on chems. As it turned out, Sienna had invited us both, proposing a three-way relationship."

Ilya stirred again. "So I was right."

"Not quite. While Cutler was all for it, being a little more adventurous than I, I politely declined her offer. I didn't think it worth a possible rift between Cutler and I."

"Bro's before hoes."

"What?"

"Nothing. So, Cutler got the girl?"

Only shaking his head at her vulgarity, Danse went on. "Actually no. _Then_ Sienna tried to have us fight it out over her. She proposed that the one left standing got to buy her a drink. So, she spent the rest of the night alone at the bar, while Cutler and I walked away a little older and a little wiser. The end. And to clarify my answer to your question... No. And once I joined the Brotherhood, I never let myself get distracted like that again."

Despite the retelling of the fond story, shame dragged on his face. He was embarrassed by his inexperience, dreading to wonder what she thought of him, that she might even not consider him a full man now that she knew the truth.

"Hey, Baby," she whispered, hand sliding up his neck to his jaw. Danse looked up at her then skipped his gaze away again, awaiting her final judgement. She had never called him _Baby_ before. It must be proof that she now thought of him as less of a man.

When he wouldn't meet her eyes, she guided him back to her by his chin. "Don't you dare be embarrassed. You put your friendship, your career, a higher purpose, before yourself and anything of personal desire. You know what I think of that? I think it's admirable. Inspirational. Even kinda sexy. All that restraint, all the tension." Her hand was running up the length of his arm, gripping at muscle. "And you know what? It means I get you all to myself."

He stared, uncomprehending, then a chuckle fell out of him without warning, and she bit her lip innocently before an unstoppable smile beamed forth upon him.

He kissed her this time, lunging for her lips with a galvanised passion. Her lips were addictive, he just couldn't get enough of them, couldn't break free of her enchanting depths and the waves of feeling she sent crashing over him with each smooth stroke of her mouth. She disarmed him with the subtle, sweet caresses she gifted him, and when she fell back and dragged him with her, he followed her down into the sand on a velvety tide of skin and heat.

Their kisses deepened, quickened, hardened, a painful need in both of them straining to break free and shatter the chains on their restraints. Ilya's body seemed to melt around his, sucking him in deeper, moulding up around him and writhing beneath him. Her thighs spread to either side of him to embrace him, and he could feel the heat of her core even through their clothing. Desire bloomed and Danse was lost in it, coffee spilling over to colour the sand around them.

He was drawn in to the rhythm of her body, moving with her, hypnotised in her luscious thrall. His hardness brushed against her core and tore a smothered moan from her mouth to his, driving him ravenous as his lips cut straight to her exposed collar bone. With her breathing erratic, Ilya pushed up to entice him and his hungry maw sought the valley between her breasts. His hands were prepared to pull down the straps of her camisole when he came to his senses, muffling a growl into her flesh.

"I'm sorry," he panted, "we shouldn't. It's too soon after what happened to you. I would be taking advantage."

Ilya matched his panting and guided his gaze up to hers, which was hazed and flushed with desire. "We don't have to take it all the way. Please, I need you. I just want to be close to you."

He was bereft of the will to resist her. In one smooth, eager motion, Danse scooped her up and stood with her wrapped to his torso, somehow finding his way to their tent while they were immersed in each others' kiss. Fumbling with the zip on the tent flap, Danse eventually found the sleeping roll and pivoted to settle into it, perching Ilya upon him. He couldn't trust himself with having free reign over her. Safer if she took the lead.

Ilya, straddling him, leaned over him to kiss him deeply, stirring his desire further. Her tongue entered his mouth and stroked against his, entwining and drawing him after her in sensuous circles. He was entranced, fascinated, the memory of their rushed affair on the Prydwen now only a distant reverie for the spellbinding effect she had on him.

His hands explored her body, spanning the gentle curve of her waist and hips. They smoothed down to the dip in the small of her back, then rose up over the taut expanse of her rump. He then gave her a testing squeeze. She moaned and giggled naughtily, her teeth clinking into his.

Her body began to move sinuously against his, melding her heat into his hard arousal. Danse groaned helplessly, hands flying back to her waist in an effort to ground himself. She dragged her lips over his jawline, aggressively working her way down his throat to where her hands were plucking desperately at his shirt. He leaned up a little to help her pull it up over his head, and then he found that her hand was on his throat, pushing him back down in order to make her way up his body with nibbling little kisses. She even bit him when she reached the thicker muscles of his chest, and it both stunned and aroused him.

A small voice in the back of his mind said _Damn, Hancock was right._

Her raunchy motions into his throbbing hunger were driving him manic, and Danse knew if he wasn't careful he might reach a tipping point.

"Hey, just slow down a bit," he told her firmly but gently, holding her motions still by the hips. "We don't need to rush."

Ilya arose from his abdomen and sat up upon him, still panting lightly, demeanour both guilty and innocent. She was a tousled, erotic goddess, dripping in lust, and he had brought her to a halt.

"And I want my turn," he finished as he sat up into her, snaking an arm around her waist. They grinned into their kiss, embracing each other anew, and Ilya gave in to Danse as he kissed a trail along her jaw toward the heart tone that pulsed at her tender throat. She gave a breathy moan that echoed in his ear. He then pressed a series of kisses along her collar bone and to her shoulder, where he slowly pulled down the straps of her camisole like he had been yearning to. Ilya's skin prickled visibly, and he kissed along her arm as more and more of her camisole slipped down her body at his whim. Every inch of her skin that he revealed, he would kiss preciously, until finally he pulled the material over her breasts and laid eyes on her wonderful bareness again.

Ilya hummed her approval as his hands cupped her breasts to caress them, and she arched as his kisses stole across her skin again and hinted toward her nearest nipple. She was aroused, her hard points straining for his tending, and she whined when he lingered teasingly.

He kissed one nipple, then the other, admiring as she closed her eyes, bit her lip, and tilted her head back. He could see the beat of her heart through the skin of her lean body, and he swore he could hear it, a crescendo of pleading.

Finally he gave one a hard, suctioning kiss, feeling Ilya shudder in his hands and hearing a pining gasp break the bitten seal on her lips. Her hand flew to the back of his neck, sliding up through his hair as she lifted her head back to gaze upon him. Her features were pulled by pleasure, and her hips began to rock against him again in an almost unconscious movement. When he kissed his way over to tend to her other nipple, she moaned and her head fell back again.

He was glad she enjoyed this so much, because he _very_ much enjoyed it. Her tender, succulent flesh was exquisite to his touch, skin almost buttery soft. With the fading sunset streaming through the tent in her backdrop, Ilya really did look like a goddess, bare-breasted and regal upon him. The notion of ravishing her senseless was consuming his mind to no end.

Heavy petting turned to firm groping. Their hands grew restless, searching for more access to skin, hers were scouring his muscles and edging dangerously close to his trousers and his hands had a firm grasp on her rear, playing with the opening of her uniform where she had pushed it down to her hips.

Before Danse knew it, Ilya had pushed him back down into the sleeping roll and was rolling her hips into him again, drawing a prolonged groan of frustrated arousal from him. His lustful eye trawled her sheening body as she worked a steady pace upon him, the undulating rhythm of her a hypnotic thing. She was a serpentine nymph. His throat felt raw with wanting, but some micro part of his brain kept nagging him to pull back.

"Ilya, we shouldn't," he breathed a cautionary warning, but she ignored him. She leaned forward to kiss him, silencing him, then she nipped at his jaw and worked her way back down his chest, her teeth grazing over his skin.

"Ilya, please," he made another attempt, though his own voice sounded unconvincing to his ears. But the timing. Her aggression. The wrong source of need that was darkly possessing her. It shouldn't be like this between them. He didn't want it to be like this. He couldn't let it be.

But her body was moving a faster friction against him, and goddamn it felt good. He couldn't make himself stop her. She was a wild, seductive creature that he wasn't willing to tame.

Her fingers worked closer to the button on his trousers, and she was so worked up that she couldn't steady her hands enough to pluck it open. When tiny whimpers of desperation began to flee from her throat, he had to stop her, clutching at her hands to bring her to a ceasefire.

"Ilya, stop. We shouldn't." At her hurt features, he thumbed her cheek softly. "You're hurting right now, and I want the timing to be right."

"But the timing might never be right. Please, Danse. I need you. I just need you."

He was thrown out of his depth, hearing her pleading him, needing him, it was the ultimate undoing of a man.

He captured her with a fierce, lusty kiss, his tongue seeking entrance and granted it immediately. She moaned into his mouth as he stroked her tongue with his, and he hoped he was doing an adequate job with his fresh experience. Her body seemed to confirm this as she continued her rhythmitic movements.

Frenzied, Danse reached his hands inside her uniform for a greedy grasp of her rump, clumsily yanking her up against his chest. Ilya wanted the thing off her skin as much as he did as she broke away from him to shuffle backward and join her legs in order to tug and shimmy the suit passed her hips. He aided her in stripping it off her legs, then pulling her boots free from her feet. It was an irksome test of their patience.

Clad only in her black underwear, Ilya climbed back on him before he could get to her and was straddling him once more, her mouth passionate on his. He barely had time to indulge in the sight of her, and wanted to lavish her with his attention, explore the raw landscape of her bare hips and thighs, cherish her curvature. But he was straining almost painfully now, her luscious thighs enfolding him, her hot core flush to him, and all that barred them was her thin slip of fabric and his zipper.

Her hand was there before he knew it, and the rasping of his zipper under her savage motion snapped him back to his senses. He had to stop them. Like an outside force disobeying his body's roaring whim he had to stop them.

Like a mindless idiot he rolled her and pressed her down with his body weight, burying his face in her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he breath through gnashed teeth. "I can't. This is— _you_ are... too much. I can't resist you."

Ilya lay panting beneath him for a time before she held his head to the niche of her neck, where he was laboriously catching his breath and calming himself. She was silent, then she came to her senses in a ragged crack of reality. "Oh god." Her voice shook, and her chest shuddered beneath think. "Oh god, Danse, I'm so sorry."

He lifted up to look upon her, but she had a hand smeared over her eyes, mouth open in dismay. She rolled away from him and tucked up her limbs, entire near-naked body unleashing a wrenching sob that punched Danse right in the gut.

"No-no-no," he petered out as he rushed to her now innocent and vulnerable form, "Shh, Ilya, it's alright."

She remained rigid as his arms encased her. "I ambushed you. Like some sort of temptress whore."

"Don't call yourself that," he berated.

At his hard-line she rolled over into him, a war of restrained emotion on her face. "I don't know what I am any more," she countered. "Your whore. Maxson's whore. I'm a fucking mess, hell, people probably think I fucked Richter to get in bed with the Children of Atom. Maybe things would just be easier that way, it's all I'm good for."

"Stop it." Danse clutched her by the arms and pulled her upright with ease, holding her in place with a vice squeeze. "You're human. You've been through hell. You're hurt and vulnerable, and I'm going to get you through this. But you have to help me do it, because I can't get you through it alone. We're a team. We've always been a team and we always will be. So we'll get through this together."

She gaped at him like a frightened little girl, and Danse almost regretted his harsh tone until she nodded, continually. Not even stopping when he pulled her to him and held her fiercely.

"It's getting dark, so how about we get some rest while it's quiet in camp?" Danse suggested, feeling Ilya nod once more into his shoulder.

"...are we going to be able to sleep in the same roll tonight?"

Danse drew Ilya back from his shoulder, deciphered the stray humour in her eyes, and choked on a laugh. "You mean without tearing each others' clothes off?"

She nodded with a sheepish smile that lifted the misery from her.

He had thought her jesting, but now he actually gave her question serious consideration and decided it had merit. "Perhaps we should sleep in our clothing tonight."

They both grinned hopelessly. Apparently they were a couple of horny teenagers in constant danger of dry humping each other to insanity. Awkwardly, they relocated their pieces of strewn clothing, wiggling around the tent pulling everything back on, then they squeezed themselves into a snug fit in a single sleeping roll. The empty one lay unconsidered beside them.

"I'm not squishing you?" Danse asked as he waited for Ilya to get settled comfortably. He was wary of making contact with the curve of her rear for fear of his reaction. And her noticing his reaction...

"Yeah, but it's a good kind of squish," she said, the smile audible in her tone, even with her back to him.

Carefully, Danse cuddled up to Ilya's back, testing a few spots out in order to position himself in preparation for the morning and its inevitability. He thought he could hear her smother a giggle into their pillow.

When he was settled, giving up on trying to create a space between himself and her rear, he planted a soft kiss behind her ear. "Now get some sleep. I'll be right here, and this time I won't be going anywhere."

* * *

He had only begun to flirt with the idea of sleep, wading in and out to the gentle tide of Ilya's breathing, when a shrill voice cut the night air outside the tent.

"Deadskull! Ilya! Damnit to hell, the pair of ya better not be fuckin' in there, 'cause I'm comin' in!"

Ilya snorted herself awake and shot up, tugging Danse up with her in the tight fit of the sleeping roll. "Cait?" she called out blearily.

The redhead blasted herself through their tent flap, her eyes the picture of lunacy. "It's Deacon and Clay, at the front gates! Some kinda shite is goin' down!"

Ilya was up and ripping out of the tent before Danse could stop her. "Ilya, wait!" She was a shot of lightning, and he quickly lost sight of her. Cursing the spy and raider under his breath, he tore after her, then realised he had forgotten his helmet, teetered back for it, then sprinted after her again.

* * *

 **A/N:** I hope you enjoyed this well-needed fluff fest. These two really had a lot of shit to sort out, and they still do, but that's the charm of them, right? lol.

-The chapter is named after an Elvis Presley song, in case you were wondering wtf was up with that. I had a eureka moment when I thought of it, realising it was perfect, lyrics and all! This reminds me to dedicate a chapter name to Bad Wolves' cover of Zombie, because that song is killing me right now.


	76. Special Announcement

**A/N:** _Sorry all for the hiatus, but I've been taking some much-needed time off from Fury Blood. I put a lot of effort and energy into the last chapter and I think it was just the tip of the iceberg to my burnout, and I just needed to take a breather and regroup my headspace._

 _But, I haven't been relaxing and bidding my time. I've never been good at doing that, lol. I've been working on the prequel novel to this series, which I'm eventually going to adapt into my own universe and hopefully publish. It will just join the dots and bring about a full circle to the events before Fury Blood, rewriting the characters etc. I figured if I want something to come of this, I need to make it happen myself, so I'm going to have to multitask. I won't be stopping with Fury Blood, I'll still write it first in the Fallout fic and post, in conjunction with writing the prequel novel. It just means I'll have to come back later and rewrite everything, but I'm willing to do that for you guys who are still enjoying reading it._  
 _Most of you probably won't care, and that's ok, but for those of you who are interested or curious, I thought I'd post a sneak peek of what I've done so far, chapters 1 and 2. I sincerely hope you enjoy!_

 _Just for reference:_  
 _Ilya's name change is purely just me wanting her name to sound more sci-fi-y to fit the universe_  
 _Mars is, of course, Deacon in disguise._  
 _Gun Runner is Dogmeat._  
 _Braithwaite is my equivalent of Hancock, with a rockier start to their companionship that will take time to develop and overcome their differences._  
 _The Pantheon fills the role of the Brotherhood, leaning on the Greek cultural influence of the militarys from the novels set before this, while Metascape the Institute._  
 _Paragon Heath takes the role of Danse, with Paragons being an ancient sect of elite warriors coming from my original novel universe set 500 years before this novel, during the time of the wars and the Great Distortion. Their place in society has taken a slight downfall from their former fame._  
 _The Warmonger is a space-rated version of the Prydwen._  
 _The Zenith is of course Maxson, whose name and identity has yet to be revealed._  
 _I think that's about all the references you might be curious about. Anything else, just ask in the comments, I try to answer every comment I get._  
 _This is only my first draft and it will all no doubt go through many rewrites, keep in mind. Some of the content is still too similar to the Fallout verse right now and it will be tweaked here and there as I go. Without further bullshit, enjoy!_

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Home Sweet Home, Never Drink Alone**

* * *

Memories of the stars in their boundless scape pushed into her dreams, haunting of a time before the war. Those stars, their cold gaze an illusion through time and space, were suddenly bursting into the heat of reach. She could reach them. Explore them. Expand out and grab more. An endless ocean of stars and worlds, a beautiful chaos of life and death written into a never ending story where humanity had reached the forever world, free to rule the stars themselves.

But she was wrong. They were all wrong.

War grew. It grew from the deep bowels of mankind's inherent nature, roaming and devouring its way through the feeble crevices in all grand civilisations, dragging all into its hungry maw, then rending and tearing its screaming masses asunder.

But war wasn't the beast that ended the forever world. War was only the awakening of the beast.

It was an unnatural thing. A phenomenon. A world destroyer of esoteric forces, breaking apart mankind's grasp of physics and reality. Gravitational anomalies, climate and weather shifts, spatial distortions. It was everywhere and nowhere. Powerful and subtle. Unconscious and uncontrollable.

And whatever it was, it haunted her dreams and twisted them into nightmares. Dark shadows chasing her footfalls, eating up the ground she tread, swallowing the millions of people around her that she couldn't save, shattering the element of her gravity until she fell into the blackhole of a star it choked.

In there, in that crush of wrath, her skin was teasingly shredded from broken bones that splintered apart, blood boiling then freezing over and cracking into the void, eyeballs bursting, lungs splitting from within, heart squeezed and crushed and fed to the dead dark.

* * *

She awoke with a scream of fury in her throat. Her hand sought a ragged grasp of sand, then rock, crunching her grip down on its solid form until her fury evoked her to thrust it out into the guilty darkness with a fierce cry.

Then silence.

Bad. Bad thing to do. But she had already given away her position by waking with a scream. Now she needed to move on. Fast. Instead, she dropped her head back on her travel pack and stared with a grudge up at the outcrop of rock she was beneath.

 _Let them come. Let the monsters eat me alive. Fuck this world._

Within a matter of moments, survival instincts kicked her in the blood and she was up breaking camp, killing the fire, and locking her weaponry in place. Snatch, click, lock. Boots hit the sand.

The stars were greedy tonight, stealing her nighttime cover, crisp embers in the sky to pull up her eyes. A rare thing. The skies were usually too smeared with pollution this far out in the badlands for the stars to pierce through.

Night fled to dawn's fingers of first light. Sipping at her water, the woman leaned back from her vigilant perch on the clifftops to gaze up at the shattered moon drifting across its lazy arc, wondering when she would be up there exploring it, scavenging its secrets.

People said that humankind's endless wars created the Great Distortion, the event that broke apart the galaxy and shattered it to hell. People said that the phenomenon was the result of a mass destructive, extra-dimensional weapon backfiring out of control. People also said it was the gods cracking down on humanity with their supernatural wrath. So they opened up a new war over it.

People were stupid fucks.

She remembered it like it was yesterday. Vast, sweeping, belittling in beautiful chaos. She was there, five hundred years ago, when the galaxy was still whole. But now she was here, stranded on this desert rock, in a lost star system, out in the ass end of the galaxy adrift in dark space.

The ancient ruins stretching across the planet and the mottled husks of warships whispered their memories of a golden age, people thriving at the pinnacle of civilisation, technology blooming on scales unforeseeable, a delicately woven co-existence of science and religion, nature and technology, all capturing minds youthful and elderly into a rich sculpture of peace.

But war had waited for its time, lurking like a hungry beast.

And so war's legacy haunted her day and night out in this land's savage sprawl, an apocalyptic haven for those tumbling on the rocks of madness, and a desolate wasteland for those fallen into the depths of despair.

"Fuck my life..."

"Skygazing again, Iliya? You're cutting it close to the distortion zone out there."

Iliya clicked at the burst of static in her earchip to cut out of her channel. Basking in the silky air of the lingering night was a respite from the rumble of the desert life, and the scorch of the midday sun. Disturbances were quick to work a welt on her temper. She sent out a scouting glance of her surroundings, trying to pinpoint her tail's location. Only inky shadows and the trebling cry of wildlife could be picked out of the landscape. But he was out there somewhere.

She sculpted her lips into a faint whistle. "Gun Runner, here boy."

Soft padding and the sifting of claws on rock proceeded the golden wolf as he heeled at her whim, viridescent eyes in her thrall. Iliya reached to dash a hand through his scruffy mane and catch a dose of his affection as he applied his tongue to her nose with a wet rasp, lapping up a layer of soot. She dropped a kiss on his head and buried her wet nose in his fur to wipe it dry.

"The Mosh Pit wants us home. You're on point, boy."

The wolf yipped his acknowledgement behind his gums, trapping the sound in. His lean hind legs pushed off a scouting run into the dunes beyond, pathfinding for the woman as she started after him. She could faintly hear the whirr of the automated turret on his combat vest as it scanned for hostiles.

The cold was still spiteful in the retreat of night, and Iliya drew her hood up against the bite of the wind. Travelling the badlands at night was dangerous in itself, from the wildlife to the killer vegetation to the raiders to the chilling temperature drop. But in the dark, wandering blindly into a distortion zone was a high risk. Suddenly the laws of physics didn't apply and one could find themselves ass over end in the sky on a floating piece of rock, or rapidly losing their sanity as the anomalous field warped their minds. Then the distorted came out to play.

The hours dripped by. The scorching daylight was like a flamethrower on her bare skin, crusting her lips and dragging out sweat from her pores to slick her skin up and invite raw burns. Her leather bodysuit and jacket helped ward off the cold and the sting of the wind, but in the heat it could be a killer, so she had to strip off into a tank top and a pair of shorts, wrapping a headscarf over herself for protection. Air crashed in and out of her lungs in a futile chase for breath.

Day bled away back into night. Iliya knew the road into the badlands like the well-licked abdomen of a manwhore and called Gun Runner in with a cheek click, curving off-road through a narrow canyon that dipped and rose in rugged clefts of rock – just like a manwhore... The detour shaved several kilometres off her journey, but took her lethally close to a local band of raiders that she was actively keeping tabs on. Her hand fondled the sidearm strapped to her thigh, but it never left its holster.

Thirst began to gnaw like a bitch, though not for water. She sipped at her canteen thirstily, but was parched for something heavier and dirtier. The promise of this at journey's end pushed her on.

The nebulous rift hugging the broken moon gashed the night sky as she walked on drifts of sand, until at long last, the nocturnal lights of civilisation competed with it.

Mothership. A pillar of the dead world, the Mosh was just a fraction of the city swarming within the corpse of a crashed starship. The monolithic piece of fossilized junk ran over two kilometres long, wedged a quarter-way into the sand by its bow. Within that buried bow of the ship was the Mosh Pit, where the lower-class denizens squatted.

The comm crackled to life. "Home sweet home, never drink alone."

Iliya bristled, shooting out a glance that scanned in every direction. "How the fuck did you get back on my comm?"

"I hacked my merry way into it. So, you got those juicy eyes?"

She tended to her earchip with a testy hiss. "Fuck off, Mars."

That earned her an amused chuckle. "C'mon, I know you were a big bad soldier in your time, but a lady should be more refined with her choice of wording."

"Fuck you."

"Impressive. You fit three fucks into our channel over the course of 15 seconds. I think that's a new record. Now you got those eyes or not?"

Lifting up the pair of blue eyes fastened together by their optic nerves, plucked from the skull of her bounty target, Iliya let a smile unfurl. "You know I have them, Mars. Or are you slipping on me, old man?"

Another chuckle. "Hey, don't get sassy now. Just get that ass back to Mothership before the distorted smell it."

Sighing, she cut the link again without preamble. As much as it was comforting to know she had a ghost out there watching her six, she didn't appreciate the air of a curfew hanging over her head on every night op. And he really was a ghost, because she had no idea who he was.

With vigilance waning for the call of hard liquor, she sliced through the darkness on silent feet and approached the clearing to the hollowed airlocks that served as the entrance to the Mosh Pit. The security guard detail snapped to as her hooded and leathered figure packing an array of heat stepped into their spotlights, accompanied by the armed canine on her heel, but they immediately stood down upon recognising her.

On her first few excursions outside the cityship, she had had to bribe her way back in on account of the guards 'not recognising her' and 'not liking the looks of her.' On the last incident, after offering up all she had, even the eyes of the bounty she had set out to collect, the guards unanimously agreed that the only reliable way she could prove her worth was to wrap her lips around their cocks and suck off every single one of them off.

She opted instead to wrap her switchblade around the nearest scumbag's cock and threaten her way in.

It left a lasting impression.

Tonight, they all snapped her disgruntled nods as she glided past. She didn't spare them a look in return and stepped up into the dusty airlock corridor. Memoirs of its past flooded her, images of how the ship's interior would have looked before its violent demise.

Crisp, clinical architecture. Spacious symmetry. Seamless symbiosis with human biology and cybersystems. Data streams in visual feasts for the eyes. All of it wasted away by time.

No one else here even knew how it all once was.

Coming from that, an idyllic peak of tech, it was hard not to fall into the pits of depression when her eyes set upon the crusted view of the Mosh Pit. Pit, being the word.

Dark, dreary aisles forked outward from the main corridor, the sandy deck on a downward slope from Mothership having her nose snorting up soil. The ship's once-sturdy interior had been stripped for materials and patched over with makeshift scrap, lending it a rustic appeal. Nooks and crannies had been carved out into living spaces, market stalls, kiosks, and the exterior hull had been busted out in favour of air vents into dug trenches and viewports into barren caves.

Iliya thought the deconstruction of Mothership was impressive, given that the advanced bio-metallic compound used in the past was virtually impenetrable by conventional means. It needed cybernetic recoding of its genetic structure in order to be broken down, or a military-grade weapon designed to scramble its structure, which were rare jewels of the ancient world.

Whoever first settled this dead whale must have been a powerful entity.

Iliya pushed back her hood once she was under the gloom of the Mosh Pit's atmosphere. It also served to advertise her face for those who were thinking of oozing in to mug her, or worse—she had put a lot of effort into getting her point across that she wasn't someone to fuck with. And she carried the scars with her.

In her sharp peripheral, she spied a lone figure saunter in on her flank then jarringly come to a halt when he caught sight of her profile. She was tempted to spin his way and throw him an air kiss or taunt him with a finger-pistol, but figured it could backfire on her with a late-night visit for a gang-bang in revenge. There was only so much a reputation could protect her from. Best to keep her combat prowess on the lowdown and not be a sassgun about it.

Her stride lengthened. Steady foot traffic rolled down the tight streets. The air was humid with body heat, and the aroma of grilled meat curled to her nose. Drunken beggars mottled the deck, squatting in the dregs of spittled alcohol and by the stench of them, vomit. Most of them gazed on with sightless eyes, all hope lost to them, but a few reached their grubby hands at her legs as she walked past, throats cracking out words of mercy and pleas for shards to buy more booze and drugs. Gun Runner warded them off with a feral snarl.

Iliya felt a sharp flare of guilt for bypassing them, and then flickers of sympathy for their plights, yet she walked on with a dark expression to mask the pain of humanity in her.

She was a soldier. She became a soldier to do her part in preventing the world—the universe—from falling into this. It fell anyway. She saw it fall, and now she lived the fallen world. Living having failed it.

She had outlived her use. What hope could she offer them now?

Her throat griped for drink and Iliya heeded it, cold-shouldering all those who vied for her attention and cutting down the quickest alley to descend decks. It took her ten minutes to weave her way down through the shanty pathway that spiralled what was once an elevator shaft. The deeper into the ship she got, the thicker and more earthy the air became.

Pulsing red neons warmed her bare skin as the rat hole spat her out on the lowest deck. The Wasteland, the best and worst bar on Mothership, riddled with scum and dangerous outcasts, churning out a motherlode of booze, and home to the infamous Wetdeck, the Mosh Pit's one and only whorehouse.

Iliya hated the place with a burning passion, but it was where the most lucrative employers skulked for bounties and treasure hunters, and it served the best quality liquor, believe it or not.

Her employer's favourite booth was empty, must be in the Wetdeck, so Iliya set Gun Runner free from her heel with a short hissing sound through her teeth, and he took off for the premade bowl of dog chum; she didn't want to know what it was made from.

Ilya prowled over to the central island bar. Time to mete out her fury at the world by obliterating herself in liquor.

Just another night in the Mosh Pit.

"Iliya Nilin, my favourite girl," purred the young barmaid, one of her smokey eyes casting a wink.

Iliya lent her a warm smile. "Hey, Demini."

"What's your poison, honeygun?"

"Just my usual kickstarter, thanks."

Demini fixed her up a whiskey on the rocks and slid it over with another wink. Iliya forced another cordial smile and wrapped her fingers around the cool glass. She liked Demini and she had become a comfy drinking companion, but keeping up a social guise was hard when her mood was as black as her soul.

"Still not keen on dipping your toes in the Wetdeck? It really could help you with all that tension you carry around, you know."

Iliya grumbled and glossed her teeth over her lips.

"And I know a couple of the boys down there that are more than keen to get their hands on you, or let you get your hands on them. Whichever fits." The smokey woman gave a slow shrug.

Plucking up her drink, Iliya smiled indulgently into her first cool gulp. "Booze works just fine as my stress relief, Demi."

"Hmph. Well if you ever need a change of poison, _or_ flavour," Demini's voluptuous breasts bulged from her corset as she leaned in closer to Iliya, a suggestive lure riding the curve of her lips, "you know where to find me."

With a chuckle and a wink, Iliya took her whiskey over to a secluded spot in the farthest corner of the rowdy bar and sank into a booth lengthwise, nursing her chilled glass to her temple to ease the sudden headache that the smoke induced. She savoured the harsh rasp of the whiskey as it burned a path down her throat, the thick sweetness lingering on her cracked lips. Soon, she went back for another, vodka this time, cleansing her palate with its distinct burn before chasing it with more whiskey to warm the pit of her cold, empty stomach. The numb slide of alcohol over her senses was pure rapture. The woes of the world ebbed and flowed away on a river of ignorant, selfish bliss.

The atmosphere swirled past in a haze of motion before long, shady eyes on individuals reeking of bad intentions giving her the once over and the occasional double-take. She was a woman—not beautiful but petite, and she liked to think sharply attractive—in a man's world, bound to garner unwanted attention. But she had gotten used to the sexist bullshit in the military before the war. Soft, beautiful women didn't belong to the military, at least not on her level.

Several drinks deep, Iliya began to grow impatient with her employer's slack work ethic.

She messed around with her datakit, its holographic display undulating above her palm before she set it to free float. It was on a constant loop to scan for active shard frequencies—ammunition cores used before the war that were now obsolete for use in weaponry that no longer existed. Dead shards were useful as a form of currency, but a rare active shard that hadn't faded from its life expectancy was a gem of power.

They were her main source of work as a treasure hunter, and with her cybernetic datakit being another gem from before the war, she had a leg up on hunting down shards over most others.

But her datakit receiver wasn't picking up any from the new scanner she had planted out in the desert tonight. Damn.

Sighing, she was about to haul ass over to the bar for a ninth round when a lean crackpot plugged himself into the booth at her side, shoving her legs out of his way. He wore slim jeans with an orange tee wrapped in a black leather jacket, his hair was a tousled brown mess of dreadlocks that he had pulled back into a man-bun, and his pale face wore a charming grin to accent the high-tech optic sunglasses hiding his eyes. Despite all that, Iliya pegged him to be in his early forties.

"Daddy's back!"

"Hey, Mars," Iliya droned, folding her leg up between them in an attempt to find comfort again.

He ignored her malcontent. "Damn, you are one tough tango to find! The last place I thought to look was the dirtiest bar and whorehouse, in the darkest corner, with a glowing red holo practically screaming out 'I'm-a-locked-and-loaded-badass-bitch-with-a-dark-cloud-over-my-head-and-a-sharp-chip-on-my-shoulder-and-hot-sauce-in-my-little-pocket-just-in-case. Oh and I can't forget the badass dog with a laser turret on his back. Hey, Gunner." He smacked fondly at the canine's ribcage, who lolled his tongue out and panted happily.

Some guard dog.

Mars' sarcastic snipe wasn't lost on Iliya. "He's a wolf hybrid, not a dog. And he'd rip your balls off if I told him to. Remember that."

Mars only laughed, and Iliya couldn't tell if it was forced or not.

From day one of crawling into Mothership, Mars stalked her. He wasn't a menace, but he was a parasite, latching on and bleeding her dry of her sanity. One day popping up out of nowhere to provide long-range fire support or to save her skin at the last moment, to another day gone without a trace while she was captured by slavers and having to save her own skin, to the next day dumping into a bar stool on her right to let her in on his newest string of bad jokes.

"You're hair still looks like shit," she mocked plainly.

The laughter fell from him and he levelled her a straight look. She arched a brow at him as a challenge. So his hand darted out like a snake to brush up her hair and reveal her pale regrowth. She batted him off.

"Your hair's still got no pigment. Better paste on some more of that dye before people start to ask questions."

Iliya raked her hair back around her face in a self-conscious effort to conceal the regrowth at her temples, the dark burgundy strands draping her vision. The loss of pigment in her hair was a side effect of something he shouldn't know about. She even had to dye her brows and lashes a startling black once a week. But Mars had never asked about her hair.

That was the first time he had ever made it known that he knew about it. Iliya stared silently at him, a lethal warning in her gaze.

He dropped his grin and the stoner facade she didn't know had been a facade. Serious, he seemed the sudden menace she had written him off from being. "The ashy hair," he spoke under his breath, "a side effect from being stuck in a distorted pocket of space for over five hundred years, right?"

Iliya kept him locked in her stare, finger stroking the latch on her sidearm holster beneath the bench.

As a stalker, she had figured he just wanted to fuck her and then gap, but with the more time rolled on and with the zero advances he'd made on her, she dropped that suspicion completely. Unless he was just really bad with women...

At first, she tried to kill him, paranoid he would get too close and blow her identity by figuring out that she was from the past. The furore would drive her from Mothership out into the badlands.

But after her first few murder attempts, Mars dropped by one day to tell her he would 'give her some space to find her zen' and he vanished from her life for an entire month. Then one morning, while she was passed out in her rented lodging after a night of lonely drinking, he appeared sitting at the end of her mattress and told her that he slipped in her vomit.

That was Mars' talent. Stalking and ghosting. No matter where she was, he always managed to track her and stalk her trail through the scope of a sniper rifle. Uninvited and creepy as shit.

She had developed a soft spot for the parasite.

But now, she was prepared to shoot the femoral artery in his thigh and drag him out into the desert to bleed out if he threatened to disrupt her life, and impede her one and only reason to keep on living.

After a tense moment of staredowns, Mars cracked into a toothy grin and slapped her sportively on the shoulder. "Relax. Your dirty little secret's safe with me. Lips," he mimed zipping his lips shut, "sealed. Yah?"

She was too sloshed for this right now. What did he mean by 'secret'? Did he mean her hair, or her past life? For all he knew, she was just a phenomenon from a distortion. Grim, Iliya decided it was too risky to ask.

Instead, she asked, "Who are you, Mars?"

The sober question brought him back into a staredown, though it was less hostile this time. The wry smile never left his face. "I'm nobody and something."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You'll think it out one day."

"Are you telling me you're a cyber?"

"Nope. If I told you I was a cyber, you'd know I was a cyber."

She blinked and went to finish the last gulp of her drink, keeping him pinned in her gaze, then realised she'd already finished her drink.

Mars flicked a gloved finger at her empty glass and then popped to his feet. "I'll shout you one more. Then you're done for the night."

Feeling on unsteady ground, and not just because she was bordering on shit-faced, Iliya wavered up from the booth and plodded to the bar in his tow. She heard him order scotch from Demini. She didn't like scotch.

So she said so. "I don't like scotch." It sounded less slurred in her head.

"You don't like scotch?"

The shake of her head seemed more punctual in her head, too. "Don't like scotch."

Demini tilted her head at Mars to concur. "It's true. She doesn't like scotch."

Mars gave the barmaid betrayed eyes as she darted away to tend to other customers. Then, he nodded his head just as slowly. "Well, too bad, 'cause you're getting scotch."

A groan welled up from Iliya's chest and she sniffed at the amber liquid.

"Why don't you like scotch?"

Another groan. "The word scotch is losing all meaning."

"So answer the question and we can drop the word scotch."

She clutched at her head and let her words trail off. "You're a fucking..."

"What the scotch was that?"

"Scotch is for old men, damn it."

Silenced, Mars leaned back across the bar to get a full measure of her. "So you think I'm old, huh?"

The slow clapping of her hands punctuated the air between them.

He pouted at her, then straightened back up. "Okay then, sassgun. I'll give you one guess at how old I am."

She didn't hesitate. "Forty-two."

"Err! Wrong! My turn. You are... Twenty-six."

She bugged her eyes at him. "How the f—"

"Cut the swearing, you're just a child. Now, since I got my guess right, I get another turn. You like whiskey, but you looove vodka because you have some ancient Russian blood in your veins."

This time she narrowed her eyes at him. "You're good... Too good. I'm surprised you even know what Russian is."

"I like to keep in touch with ancient Earthen cultures and nationalities. It's boring now that we're all just mutts. Variety is the spice of life, right?"

Score. So he was a stoner _and_ a study. Odd mix. "Most people don't even know what Earth is. Or was," she added with a shrug, "if it still exists out there."

"Well that makes the two of us very cultured, educated people, doesn't it? We should be careful with our knowledge, don't you think? Wouldn't want the Pantheon or Metascape hunting us across the bads."

By the way Mars' eyebrows were wagging up over his shades, he was hinting at her. Again, suggesting he knew that she wasn't from this world. Staying out of the Pantheon and Metascape's radars was a prime priority, and now Mars was threatening to be a loose end. It caused a chill to settle over her sticky skin beneath the tight leather and she polished off the iced scotch, feeling the chill right down to her gut.

Mars decided to chip in again on her discomfort. "So you ever going to tell me why you have a male Russian name, or do I have to guess that one, too?"

She had been wondering when that would crop up. "Uh-uh. You'll need to get me much more wasted than this if you want that story. I think I'll keep it close to heart, unless you feel like telling me why you're named after the fourth rock from the Sun?"

"I could be named after the Roman god, for all you know." He indicated his brows over her shoulder. "Unfortunately, time's up."

Thinking him bluffing, Iliya turned on a sceptical eye-roll and spotted her employer lounging down in one of the private booths across the length of the vast space, an entourage of scanty girls and burly guards swarming around him.

"It's been a nice little bonding session, Ia," Mars swiped her attention back. _Ia. Must be my new nickname. Cute._ "Go and throw up the last hour in the bathroom, and go make some shards so you can spend them on more booze. Gotta love the way the world goes 'round. Ta-ta." With that, he slithered from the bar and wove his way out between shady lurkers who eyed the piece of gear rimming his eyes and then the piece at his had long since eyed it to be a silenced handcanon, though she'd never witnessed him use it.

There goes her chance to murder him.

 _Just who the hell is that old little shit?_

Rebelling against his advice and reckoning she could hold her liquor like a big girl, Iliya fished out her tethered eyeballs from the pouch on her belt and sauntered over to the private booth commonly occupied by her current employer. The smell of warp and other vapour drugs hit her potently.

"Braithwaite. Living the life, I see."

The distorted man centred her in his black gaze and split apart the bio-metallic plating on his face to grace her with a charismatic grin. Strikingly white teeth flashed her to contrast his deep grey skintone. The growth of the plating over his scalp preventing any hair from forming, giving him a bald aspect. He wore a gold threaded overcoat and was shirtless beneath, exposing the plating across his chest in its natural interweaving design. That plating would also be curving around the walls of his heart. Iliya knew from experience how hard the distorted were to kill.

"Nilin. Just the woman on my mind," he charmed, voice a jarring grate on her eardrums due to the plating inside his throat, and she fed him a spiky smirk.

"Among all the others swirling around in there with me."

He surrendered a scoff. "Hey well, I ain't fussy."

The girls hanging around the booth smiled knowingly at her, and it was no farce that they adored their regular client. Braithwaite's clout with the girls on the Wetdeck was infamous. He must be one hell of a charmer and a hell of a thing in the private chambers, because physically, Iliya didn't see his appeal, with the mutated biological metal growing out from his skin to plate his body like an exoskeleton. He looked like an alien, and the distorted no longer considered themselves human. Most despised them out of mistrust for their mental instability.

Either that, or his druglord status kept the girls on his leash.

Iliya produced the eyeballs and dangled them out for him to see. "Got your bounty. DNA code burned into the retina."

Braithwaite leaned forward and hovered a hand out for her to plop the eyes in. "You're a little machine," he applauded, armoured fingers rolling around the eyes until the pupils stared back at him.

"I checked him out before making the kill. He was a class-A piece of shit and deserved to die ASAP."

"Very true. Even more truthfully, I wasn't expecting you back for a few more days. The badlands are a dangerous place for a lone speedrun, especially at dark."

Her hand scruffed at Gun Runner's ear. "I wasn't alone, despite my cliche rep and the bad attitude. Had some help from Gunner here." _And my stalker._

"Quite the pooch you got there," he commented with obvious interest. Enough to have Iliya suspect he wanted the wolf for himself.

More than a little proud of her canine companion and of the extra security she had commissioned on his combat vest, Iliya favoured a hip and took a lengthy measure of the distorted man lounging before her, thick in his shallow power of shards, drugs, and girls.

She liked him, but she didn't respect him.

"Gunner chooses his friends for himself," she stated, watching as Braithwaite's coal black eyes shot up to her, then an impish smile cracked his face.

"I like your dog, but I like you more." He leaned back and took a long drag on his warp-laced cigarette, eyeing her as cunningly as she was him. "Before I give you your shards and risk never crossing paths again, I have another job for you. A big one. Keen?"

"Keen in hearing more."

"It's a start." He handed the eyeballs off to one of the girls standing nearby, her bare breasts out proudly on display. Iliya noticed they were gilded with neon purple tattoos, her nipples pierced with twin metal spikes. "Scan these for me would you, doll?"

She took them without a word and perused out of the booth to the back of the bar, where the public retinal scanner was mounted for use.

Braithwaite signalled for one of the guards to seal the booth shut, and Iliya eyed him warily, identifying the piece in his grasp as a riot shotgun with an active shard load. Typically, only the Pantheon and Metascape were capable of getting their hands on active shards. These boys and girls weren't just here to play.

Braithwaite then went on. "I've got my hands on an active shard signal. That alone is rare enough and cause for one fat paycheck, but this isn't just any shard. We think it's a shard core. A corona." He paused for effect, waiting to see if she knew the implications.

She did. "Used to power vehicles and heavy munitions. Coronas have half the shelf life of an infantry shard. It's almost impossible that one's still active out there."

"A good bounty hunter, and an enlightened treasure hunter." Braithwaite was apparently impressed. "I think I found the one for the job."

Iliya rolled this around in her head. A power source like that could light up the entire ship and tip the balance of the power-play. If she took this job, she would be playing in Braithwaite's corner and possibly giving him rule of Mothership. He was a crafty character, a death dealer and druglord, a sleazy womanizer, and who knew what else was hiding under that exoskeleton. She wouldn't put the slave-trade past him. He was an unknown entity to her and she had no respect for him.

"You're taking a big risk by letting me in on this."

The druglord grinned. "I've taken some self-serving precautions. No one else on Mothership or anywhere else in the badlands is gonna find that signal. I had my people zero in on it the moment we picked it up out there, and cap its frequency with a jammer. The signal's isolated and sitting pretty for the moment. Has been for months. Not even the Pantheon have made moves on it. All I needed was the right hunter to stumble along."

"I'm flattered."

"You earned it."

Iliya folded her arms across her chest and adopted a dubious posture. This was all moving too fast. She studied the grade of gear on Braithwaite's men more intently. Standard merc-grade carbon polymer and steel alloy armour with assault armaments from rifles to shotguns, acquired through Mothership's colourful array of arms dealers, glinting with a few custom modifications but nothing to parallel military-grade. She then fixed her gaze back on Braithwaite. "One job, and suddenly I'm your number one girl. Either you're very trusting and possibly very gullible, or there's more to it and I'm being suckered into a trap."

"Wary, another good trait." Braithwaite was nodding in his perusal of her. Then he threw up his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine. I'll spill. I've been keeping tabs on you."

Her stomach dropped, then clenched like a rock and turned molten. First Mars, now this freak. Clearly she wasn't good at keeping a low profile.

 _Reckless. Fuck me._

Braithwaite read her reaction and was quick to clarify. "Relax. Just out of professional interest is all. Specifically your taste in work, and I liked what I saw and heard. You take only the jobs that suit you, you stay out of the fuckscape of the gang warfare that rattles this ship, and you're good at keeping your head down and staying relatively off the grid, but you come up for air when shit needs getting done. And when that shit needs getting done, I like your style. Leaves a warm, kinda bloody taste in my mouth."

His voice snarled on the tail end of that sentence, and Iliya flicked up her brows in a gesture of surprised gratitude. She couldn't deny that this world had turned her a touch feral. Maybe a little too much, since it had earned someone's attention.

"You're a woman of action, you get the dirty work done, but most of all, you're a woman of principle. And in this business, in this pisshole world, that's like finding... well, a corona in the middle of a desert planet, out in a rogue star system cut off from the galaxy, five hundred years after said corona should be out of juice. You get me?"

"It would have been quicker to say I'm a diamond in the rough."

"Ah, but predictable of me, and devoid of style."

Iliya stuck to her wary guns and paced to the side a meagre few steps. He was openly discussing this secretive topic right in front of his muscle and his entertainment. What was stopping one of them from betraying him and taking that corona signal to another big player? Did he have them all under his thumb with blackmail or death threats?

"What's stopping me from taking the signal co-ordinates right to another buyer, or just taking the corona for myself?"

"For one, that principle I mentioned. And two, if you did the dirty on me, then with sadness in my black heart, I'd have to go and put a bounty on your head."

"Naturally."

"Naturally."

Iliya stopped pacing. "For a druglord, you put a lot of emphasis on principles. I smell a two-faced charlatan."

He barked a laugh and it rattled on for a moment longer in his throat. "You don't let up, do you? Who says a warphead can't also be a good egg?"

"Psychology."

"Well, Nilin, maybe you and your outerworldly enlightenment know a real thing about psychology, but you don't know a damn real thing about me. You're wondering what you'll be starting by handing over such power to someone like me. I can't let you in on my agenda until I know for sure I can trust you, and you, as someone of principle, can't give power to someone that you're not sure you can trust yet. So, tricky situation. But one of us is gonna have to take a leap of faith. As an extra incentive, not only will you be handsomely paid and let in on what I start, you'll be given a top position in my crew. As to what exactly that will be... well, whatever strikes your taste."

He was keen to get her onboard whatever it was he was kickstarting. A gang war to end all gang wars? He had just said himself that he respected her avoidance of those shitstorms. Maybe he reckoned himself above all that and any war he started should be thought of a cleansing or purging of rivalries. She didn't like his air. It smelled of corruption and greed. People like him, people who profited off suffering and strife, were the reason the world fell and was still falling. They were the scourge of humanity.

Whatever he had up his sleeve, Iliya didn't have the time or patience for gang wars and shallow agendas over wealth and power.

She had fought through that political fuckscape during the wars, and look what good it did. Soldiering was simpler.

She made a snap decision on impulse. "I think I'm gonna walk," she delivered sweetly.

Braithwaite's plated features spiked up in shock for a split second before he schooled his features again. "That's too bad. It's your loss, Nilin." He gestured for one of the henchmen to pass over a satchel, and she took it with a polite nod, untying its noose to check the glimmer of two hundred shards within. Done and done.

Without another word, she pivoted on her heel and pushed through the sealed doors out into the dense smoke of the Wasteland. Gun Runner's claws tapping on the deck followed in her wake.

* * *

The blood wept down her gloved fingers and dripped like tears into the night. Iliya imagined it was blood every time she coloured the roots of her hair with it. Crying out of her skull like the mind dying within. Crushing, bleeding, withering away.

This dead world was slowly bleeding her dry.

She balanced off the edge of the ship's upper hull, playing with the thought of just losing her balance enough to tumble over and fall into the night with the droplets of blood.

 _Oh no, I fell. Now I'm dead, what a shame._

It was a luring thought.

The cold air slashed the back of her neck as if in punishment. The notion of Gun Runner finding her corpse splattered down there slashed through her head in punishment, too.

"You ever think of just, jumping off?"

The wistful voice belonged to Mars. Of course. He didn't even surprise her.

"Sometimes I think you can read my mind..."

The sound of his footsteps drew nearer on her six. "Maybe I can. Wouldn't that be scandalous?"

Iliya automatically tensed as the presence in her blindspot came within striking distance, but she dropped her guard when he plopped harmlessly down at her side, dangling his legs overboard and staring out at the desert vista. For a brief moment, she wondered on the wistful tone of his voice just before.

"Do you?"

He turned her way and waited tacitly for the rest of her question.

"Ever think of jumping?" she extended quietly.

There was a sigh, a release of his gaze back out on the desert. He stayed like that for so long that Iliya gave up on his answer.

"Why didn't you take the job?" he asked at length.

She continued pasting the dye through her roots. "I didn't like the way he smelled."

"Of rum, warp and sex?"

"Among other things."

"It wasn't because he was distorted?"

"No." Her answer was crisp, held singular for emphasis. "I have nothing against the distorted. If you could read my mind you would know that."

Mars smirked to himself, pulling his leather jacket taut from the chill and blowing out a train of frost. "My powers are selective. I can read your mind and know that you're not just surviving out here to live, because you're the type that _needs_ a reason to live. You're pushing for something." He leaned nearer, puffing frost in her face for reasons only known to Mars. "You, Iliya Nilin, have an agenda."

Iliya only slanted him a glare.

"Hm. Still don't trust me, huh?"

"It's not a secret," she said as she wrapped her processing hair up into a bun. "See that cracked moon up there?"

His sunglasses tipped skyward. "Nomad. The big bright one in the Valley of the Dead? Yup. I can confidently report that I can see it."

Iliya tugged off her gloves and squeezed them inside-out to keep from touching the potent dye. "Nomad is where I'm pushing." She surged to her feet as Mars kept his gaze locked up in the treacherous debris field around Nomad known as the Valley of the Dead, her leather boots clunking hard on the hull.

"The Valley of the Dead is also where the Pantheon are sitting fat and happy," he reminded her pointedly. "You enter their kingdom, you're gonna have to dance with them to get to that moon."

She joined his gaze up at the shattered Valley. "They want a dance, they'll get a dance. My husband's body is on that moon. And not even the Pantheon will stop me finding him."

Mars looked back to her with undisguised shock. Clearly his powers hadn't mind-read that.

"Then, my agenda is to bury the both of us somewhere in the Valley of the Dead. Fitting, don't you think?"

Iliya left him alone in the dark, at Mothership's height.

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Unto the Zenith**

* * *

The Pantheon _Warmonger_ stretched across the backdrop of the golden planet like a sleeping leviathan, her hull plating of fathomless black that gave the impression that ones eyes were being drawn deeper and deeper into the inescapable gravity of a blackhole.

Phenomenal.

She was the Pantheon nation's pride and joy, the only warship in their arsenal, lavished with their cutting-edge technology and blessed with the greatest soldiers and operatives on her crew. She was throne and home to the Zenith himself, and he commanded her on the path to glory like no other of his royal bloodline had before him. She was the jewel of the Pantheon.

He would miss her.

Paragon Heath stood prone and proud before his seven-man squad, assembled in their strict economy by the moon base's viewport, formidable and ready to deploy on his order. He was adept at identifying talent and his superiors tasked him wisely. They were each exceptional men and women whom he had been given the liberty of hand picking for this field operation. He placed his trust implicitly with each of them, and he had built up a personal rapport with each of them, in kind, considering them his brothers and sisters in arms.

Though, he wouldn't go as far as to say they were friends, however. Building friendships was an entirely dissimilar nature. One he wasn't so adept at.

But despite his utmost confidence and pride in his men, he couldn't banish the seed of distress that had burrowed itself into his gut. This was a mission of multiple high risk factors. They would be isolated, deep in unstable territory, surrounded by hostiles, and their final mission objective could bring them face-to-face with Metascape's elites.

What if he got his team killed, or worse, distorted, again?

He wasn't certain he could survive that. Not again.

"Achilles team," he addressed with a crisp tongue to defy his inner turmoil, observing in satisfaction as they snapped alert. "Mission objective phase one is straightforward; make touchdown planetside and secure the DZ, then establish a base of operations. That anomaly won't find itself, so we may find ourselves in for the long-haul. You all know the harsh environment down on Threshold and you all know the risks of survival in distorted territory. Now is your last chance to back out. For your own sake, you would be wise to do so."

In true Pantheon nature, none of his men so much as twitched a muscle. His brethren, sons and daughters of the creed, statues of honour and bravery, with a touch of madness. Registering their stern acceptance of this, Paragon Heath nodded his visor to assert his pride in them, then turned in favour of the base's hangar bay.

Achilles moved in tandem in his wake. The interior of the base was utilitarian in nature, all resources put to practical use without a shred wasted on superficial embellishments. The only exception to that ethos was in the name of honour, punctuated by banners of cloth or painted plates of rusted steel carrying the sigil of the Pantheon, and mementos and relics of the fallen. These served as inspirational reminders to the Pantheon's cause, and pushed a soldier through the breach of oath.

Heath thundered onward at the lead, mechsuit powering his step in loud reinforcement. "Remember, a main priority is to avoid disturbing the natives. Our relations with outsiders are already bad enough without our presence inciting a revolt of any kind. Operating procedure stands as is with armed civilian contact; do not fire unless fired upon. Understood?"

"Understood, sir," his troop chorused ardently.

Nomad's cratered landscape yawned out into view as the hangar bay's docking ramp folded out, preparing to spit out Achilles' gunship. The moon was blemished by the ancient impacts of the distortion event that cracked it into a third of its former glory. It's surface glowed along its tectonic boundaries with veins of molten lava, reminiscent of tear trails weeping through the dry crust.

Heath often ruminated on what it must have been like to witness the Great Distortion, to observe the moon splintering apart before his very eyes and saturating Threshold's exosphere with a ring of debris. For those poor, foolish souls, it must have been a violent anarchy to behold, yet an extraordinary moment of utter awe.

"Beautiful, in an abstract, artistic sense, isn't it, Paragon?"

He broke from his reverie to centre his gaze down on his second, Lieutenant Marquis, her fine, pale features warped into a curious smile.

"In an abstract sense," he agreed with a measure of restraint. "Though the cause begets the lesson in it. They only had themselves to blame, and now their descendants have to live with the consequences."

Marquis' smile waned and compressed into a line thin as he blunted her casual approach. It hadn't been wholly intentional on his part, more of a knee-jerk reaction. She was accustomed to it. She would survive.

As the troop veered off onto the docking gangways, they marched through an honour guard stationed to see them off with unwavering Pantheon salutes. Paragon Heath caught sight of the zenith presiding over their departure from the viewport on the balcony above them, his figure overcast in shadow but no less distinguishable.

The pillar of austerity that inspired them all.

The paragon felt his features gridlock into a stern set as he led his team on to where their gunship was waiting, its engines humming through his bones even within his mechsuit. He snapped to a halt and smacked his suit's metal hand against his chestplate, then bound it into a fist and pumped it against his chest with twice the vigour, visor held high. A mighty salute to his zenith.

The passionate snap, smack, and pump of his team behind him resounded throughout the spacious hangar not a moment later.

"Unto the Zenith!"

The united warcry ricocheted from each soldier on the gangways and fused into a single bestial shout. To reciprocate, the figure of the zenith locked into a hearty return salute.

Then, his voice breached the reign of silence. "If we, the Pantheon, are unrelenting in our purpose, then the apocalypse will never again bring what remains of mankind to its final ruin. That distortion anomaly has challenged us before and we honour our fallen brethren in their brave first contact. They paved the way to your victory. This, you, right here, right now, may be the beginning of the complete security of our future. Unto the Zenith."

It was a husky voice, one that was borne of strife and strain but not by age. It was a voice that commanded respect and authority. It was a voice that Paragon Heath honoured above all else.

He gave a curt nod before releasing his salute, unsure whether the zenith would perceive it from his distance. But he thought he could see the subtle nod of the zenith's head in return. He could just as easily have imagined it.

Flight Specialist Pander took the helm and the gunship thrummed in anticipation of freedom. The docking clamps disengaged and the launching struts dipped to give the gunship a running start, conserving resources as an efficient alternative to a power hungry lift-off. The Pantheon were methodical in their efficiency, luxuriating in nothing save for honour.

The kick from the main booster tempted Heath into a grin, and he was thankful for his visor concealing it from his squad. He observed and analysed as his team endured the g-forces in grim sobriety. As to be expected of a Pantheon soldier. And he was their example.

Nomad's feeble gravity gave the gunship free rein to climb altitude and glide across the thin atmosphere to enter the Valley of the Dead's debris field. Space gaped out in its barren abyss between the two worlds, stretching them apart in an almost symbolic calm in the chaos.

The new, cinematic perspective of the _Warmonger_ transfixed the paragon's gaze in awed reverence, evoking furthermore feelings of mourning. What if he never saw her again? What if he couldn't get his team out to see her again?

Training kicked in, mind fracturing and compartmentalising, and he overrode himself with a heavy dosage of pride and conviction, remembering the zenith's words.

View of the warship was burned out by the crack of light over the planet's horizon, the system's star, Exodus, opening her maw to them. She was a main sequence star of similar nature to the Sun, according to the Pantheon's reams of scientists and historians. To Paragon Heath, it was just a giant ball of smelting gas that could mercilessly kill a man caught out in the desert worlds spanning the system.

To worship her like their ancestors had would only bring them to their ruin once more.

"Keep our approach vector from the nightside, Pander," Heath advised.

"Sorry, sir." He corrected his approach diligently. "Just wanted a slight tan on my face is all."

"That's fine, Pander," was his cold consolation.

"The one upside to field ops on Threshold is the tan," Corporal Kassel in the troop load threw out over the bucking of atmospheric entry. "I'm sick and tired of looking sick and tired in this spacer skin."

"You all look the same to me." Medical Specialist Magoro received a round of spits and cackles from the team. His skin carried a dark, velvety pigment that could almost pull purple in certain lights. He was the darkest man Heath had ever seen, and he had to wonder on the purity of his heritage; most segregate races of humanity had been lost to inbreeding, and strong racial features in such abundance was now rare. A thing to either be envied or ridiculed. Racism was not tolerated within the ranks and could incur severe repercussions, but Magoro enjoyed emphasising his distinction in good humour, and clearly was proud of it.

Heath admired it, and let it slide. His team needed all the opportunities to bond that they could be given, and banter was welcome under his command.

"Hitting the troposphere, folks," Pander broke the chatter, his hands dancing over the helm controls to keep the gunship under his reins. The vivid heat crashing over the canopy and the bucking grew more intense, inciting some of the team to clamp down in their harnesses, those in mechsuits grabbing the overhead handholds, but they were otherwise unfazed.

Planetary drops were standard basic training exercises that all Pantheon citizens endured, soldier or not.

Breaking through the atmosphere unveiled a vast landscape swathed in sand and rock. Willowy plantlife in shrubs and grasses were scattered in patches that favoured precious moisture, secretive lagoons and whispering rivers. Colossal buttress roots of submerged flora threaded pathways around these water sources, speaking of a planet once abundant with life. Nature licked her wounds and strived on against mankind's abuse and oppression, just as the Pantheon.

Threshold wasn't a dead world, but it was dying, nonetheless.

On the northern horizon the land rose in a litany of peaks, a rugged mountain chain stretching as far as the eye could perceive, and beyond sprawled the uncharted tundra plains. This region of Threshold was more forgiving on life due to the oceans washing in on its flanks, but this land was marred by the scars of the lost-world and wrapped densely with distortion fields, unpredictable in their wrath. The Pantheon steered clear. So did the rest of the desert population.

On the night side of the desert planet, the terrain was difficult to make out and Pander resorted to his night-vision optics. Paragon Heath had chosen their DZ within a day's hike from the main civilian stronghold of this desert region, known as Mothership. If they were running low on supplies, or in the worst case scenario they needed assistance, civilisation was within reach.

Under prior instruction from his squad leader, Pander honed in on the DZ well out of visual range from Mothership, the derelict spacecraft only a streak of commingled nightlights on the starry horizon. The sprawl of the city ruins came into visual clarity, a dappling of half-buried structures hugging the contours of the mountain ranges. Snaking around the ruins was a thin river trailing in from the mountains, separating the city from Mothership.

The paragon knew the Marathon river to be wide and deep enough to be considered an obstacle to cross, especially for a soldier in a heavy, non-buoyant mechsuit. He cringed at the thought of rusting up the metal in the event of crossing the river, but it was an assurance to deter any pursuing forces in their wake.

As they drew nearer and swooped to scan for night lurkers, the ancient skyscrapers stood like elder sentinels over the ruins, their grandeur long lost to time. It was a forlorn sight to behold, eerie reminders to a world of perished souls.

"Set us down on the outskirts. That structure there."

"Yessir," Pander complied in singsong, tenderising the gunship's inbound angle under his steady hand. Flight Specialist Pander may come from a chequered past and with less experience than many of the other pilots in the dossiers provided to Heath during mission construction, but his aptitude scores spoke for themselves, and one inspection of his simulator training exercise had Heath's mind settled in a quick snap. The unruly pilot had an edge that came naturally to him.

Paragon Heath had an eye for edges.

The site he had chosen was an isolated structure laying on the city outskirts, surrounded by an open plaza of sand. It's height offered a vantage point, and its separation from nearby structures offered a killing ground for any threats.

Flares of gunfire studded the darkness of the city ruins, the rabid nightlife of gangs and raider bands squabbling over territory. If they were smart, they would steer clear of the sound of the gunship descending for a landing. If they were stupid, they would come and then they would die.

Sand gusted in a wide radius around their landing zone as the mechsuit soldiers piled out first and fanned around the gunship, weapons at the ready, followed by the rest of the squad. Hot streams of air cut through the chill of night with the pungent zing of ozone, exuding from the gunship's shard core.

Heath pored his night-vision over the surrounding environment afar and primed his assault rifle in the steady metal hands of his mechsuit, consciously manoeuvring himself ahead of those without mechsuits in the event they came under sudden fire. No sightings of hostiles from the air, but an aerial sweep couldn't be relied upon alone, and if they were to be the victims of a surprise attack, he would eagerly spill his blood for his brothers and sisters.

"Clear," Lieutenant Marquis supplied hoarsely from within the shelter of mechsuits. She had her sniper sights sweeping along the rooftops overhead, while Magoro and Pander hunkered on her flanks as her twin spotters.

They had landed on the submerged rooftop of some type of industrial factory, the evidence of which was in the mechanised limbs extending out from great machinery visible through the blasted-out wall of the floor above them beside the rooftop. He slotted the mystery of those limbs and the cause of the blasted wall away for later contemplation, and focused on mission security.

"Lieutenant," he summoned Marquis, who was at attention immediately. "Take Lagunero and the privates, set up a perimeter. The rest of us will move inside and secure the building. Don't hesitate to call for back-up if you spot even the slightest movement."

"Understood. Be careful, sir."

"Be vigilant."

They set out on their tasks, Heath taking point into the sand-immersed factory building below them. The windows had been blown in by some ancient catastrophe, or had just succumbed to the pressure of the piled sand, giving them easy access to filter in down the sand slides.

The base floor of the factory appeared to have been burned out by a flash fire, the interior blackened and charred. Automated machinery was crippled and scraps of debris had been strewn across the entire length of the factory floor. There was no way to tell what was constructed here.

Corporal Kassel stooped over in his mechsuit to paw at a gnarled chunk of material. Beside it, a glum skeleton scorched to the marrow. "You think this mess is recent or pre-distortion?"

That was a good question. Paragon Heath sifted his gaze across the scope of it all, on sentry while his team investigated. "Judging by the state of the debris here, I'd hazard to say it's pre-distortion. There's no evidence of a firefight, and there's no origin source of explosives." He kicked his thick metal boot at a piece of innocent junk, observing as it tumbled away a short distance before jostling into yet more scrap. "All this scrap could be put to good use. If this was recent, it would have drawn scavengers by the troop loads."

"Ours now," Kassel grunted.

"We could smelt most of this down and repurpose it into barricades and fortifications." Magoro was collecting a sample of soot from the ground, making use of his wide range of technical expertise for the team's benefit.

"Zeds, how long do you think we're gonna be here?" Kassel snapped, though he kept his guard down the lengthy aisles of the factory.

"As long as it takes to find that signal, Corporal," Heath interjected.

The corporal's helmet shot in his direction to register the mild reproach before obediently jerking back to keeping watch.

Magoro stood from collecting his sample and slipped the vial into a side pocket of his pack. He patted at it fondly. "Just checking for evidence of distorted matter. Better to be safe than sorry."

"Good initiative, Magoro." Paragon Heath awarded him an approving nod. He was proving to be a great asset to the mission.

"So if this was a distortion, what do you think it was?" Pander lodged the question they had all been wondering. He was the least adventurous of the team and was sticking close to Paragon Heath's hulk. He seemed more at ease in the air than on his feet, which was common amongst pilots.

There was a fleeting silence, imaginations no doubt running amok.

Magoro ventured first. "Whatever atmospheric events that caused the planets in the system to turn to wastelands could have been localised into more concentrated pockets, too. Like spontaneous outbreaks of flash fires or nuclear blasts. We've all seen the sky fires on Maw."

"The space fires across the Valley," Kassel added, a morbid note in his tone.

Magoro nodded, mournful. Silence fell over them again. None of them would be forgetting the loss of the moon colonies in their lifetimes. Especially not Heath.

"Could also have been a lunatic with a flamethrower and incendiary 'nades," Pander quipped to break the mourning.

Kassel snorted with apparent amusement. "That's it. My shards are on that. Way easier to put the blame on one psycho with a flamethrower than on a pissed off god or whatever the zed the distortions are."

Paragon Heath agreed with that sentiment. It was easier to blame something tangible. But as for the distortion event that ravaged the Valley colonies, there was nothing tangible to blame. Yet it wasn't as blameless as a simple natural disaster. It cast an abstract blame on their ancestors that made seeking justice redundant. That made grieving much more cruel.

He opted not to voice his internal thoughts on the matter.

"Right," he adjourned, "let's move on to the upper floors. Corporal, you're on point."

"Yes, sir."

They moved efficiently across the factory floor and filed up the central stairway, Kassel and Heath having to exercise caution with their weight on the ancient steps. The structure creaked and groaned as if in pain, but the lost-world hybrid material of bio-metallic compounds and carbon alloys held under the weight of the two half-tonne, heavily armoured combat units.

The office department of the factory was spacious and in utter detritus. The lobby opened out into a circular walkway around a gaping balcony overlooking the ghosts of the workers below. A glass floor had once sealed off the looking-hole, but was now a blunt and shattered remnant. Desolate skeletons lay in tensile graves of dust. Furnishings remained in obsolete solitude. A haunting quiet hovered in the dark, musty corners of the walls.

Paragon Heath came to a standstill before the elevator shaft next to the base floor stairway. "There's only two floors above us. We split up, conduct a sweep and secure, then report back here. Let's be thorough, you never know what we could find stashed away that could prove useful." His team gave a medley of nods. He fixed his visor on Magoro. "Magoro, you're with me. We'll take the upper floor."

Heath and Kassel made use of their mechsuits' enhanced strength and pried open the ancient elevator shafts, discovering that the elevators themselves had succumbed to the base of the shaft long ago, most likely in the event of whatever ravaged the factory, or the entire city.

The paragon shouldered his rifle to the magnetic grips on the back of his suit and provided Magoro a boost up on the elevator cable, where the soldier skilfully shimmied his way up. Heath waited below until the soldier flung himself over to the doorframe of the top floor and got to work prising it open with his combat knife.

The paragon then grasped across at the cable to test some of his weight on it, the length of his suit's arm making this an easy reach. Then, satisfied, he hauled himself out by his arms and hung by his mechsuit's strength alone. The cable grumbled and strained, but protested no more than that. It would be one hell of a thunderous landing if he did fall, but nothing his suit couldn't compensate for.

"Most of the lost-world elevators we've found used artificial gravity to propel them," Kassel pondered from below. "This seems older than ancient."

"Yet still effective," Heath responded while climbing his way up, hand by hand. "Why discard something old if its still effective, and most likely inexpensive to manufacture? This factory is a humble size, in an industrial area on the outskirts of a grand metropolis. I'd wager that it was a young business just getting off its feet."

"You sure you're not sneaking into the operatives' division of the Pantheon, sir? You know too much about the lost-world for a soldier."

Heath almost smiled in his helmet. "Paragons have a reputation to uphold, Corporal."

"Yes sir, the perfect soldiers in arm and mind," Kassel intoned with full respect, then, wryly, he added, "just don't forget to pass on some godly tips to the rest of us mere mortals, sir."

"It's why I'm out here, Kassel."

Paragon Heath proceeded on point on the top floor, Specialist Magoro closely in tow. This appeared to be reserved for upper management, told by the plush furnishings and generous space for each private office. Dust and sand coated nearly everything in a modest layer. Floor to ceiling windows were blown out, the desert wind eerily whistling through the cold confines.

Expertly blocking out his human nature of imagining this all intact before the war, Paragon Heath moved through his operational processes and got stuck in to the tedium of scavenging.

The two went room-to-room, searched draw-to-draw, cabinet-to-cabinet, rifling through anything of possible value or insight. They scrounged up lost-world food still in their packaging, disturbingly free of expiration dates. Basic first-aid kits were torn off the walls and rummaged for useful supplies to horde. Dead shards could be found rolling around in bottom drawers like marbles, used not only for ammunition but likely to power small appliances and portable devices.

Magoro tried the desk consoles while Heath inspected the skeletal remains for datakit neural implants. Every lost-world citizen seemed to have one, even the youngsters, and finding one still intact was a godsend to the Pantheon.

"No luck, nanocircuitry is fried on these," Magoro reported from over by the office workstation. He had managed to insert an active shard from his supplies into the console's power feed and activate it's rudimentary functions, a cold blue holographic display forming a fragmented, glitching screen. "Everything is stored through cybernetic symbiosis, and everything cyber is dead. Without a bio connection, finding any hardcopy records in this place is unlikely."

"Regardless, try every console on this floor. We don't want to find out the hard way if we're sitting on an ancient cache of black-market armaments or hazardous substances."

"Yes, sir," Magoro assented without hesitation, plucking up his shard and heading out of the office to the adjacent door.

Heath bent to a knee, his mechsuit hydraulics whirring, and respectfully turned a ragged skeleton to gain access to the base of its skull. He saw the forefinger-sized indent of the neural implant site, and fingered it gently with his metal hand, pulling the tiny shard free from the slot that popped out. These neural shards were different from others, a quarter the size but with a wealth of information. They were essentially personal computers, allowing a user to connect to the universal cybergrid, which as far as he knew, may no longer even exist out there.

Cut off from the rest of the galaxy, there was no way of knowing if mankind even existed out there either. His job was to ensure this system didn't follow suite with the same fate for humanity, and to ensure the Pantheon led the way back to glory from square one. Even if he never lived to see the age where humanity breached the edge of the star system and reunited with what remained of the galaxy, his duty to his species fulfilled him. What else was a soldier to live for?

Yet, even with the honour of the Pantheon's ideology at the forefront of his mind, driving him onward in his daily cause, the awareness of the fact that in his hand, in this tiny marble, was a person, gave him sentimental pause. Housed memories, recorded sensations, irreplaceable mementos, a lifetime of gathered information, professional and personal.

He was holding what remained of this person.

Sighing, he banished such futile sentimentality. Full of resolve from wandering thoughts, the paragon fisted his metal hand around the miniature shard and stretched back up to a stand.

* * *

Corporal Kassel and Flight Specialist Pander were already waiting at the rendezvous on the lobby floor.

"Find any goodies, sir?" Pander was the first to ask.

Heath assisted Magoro across from the cable before acknowledging the question. "Food, medical supplies, dead shards, a few neural shards from implants, and some knick-knack souvenirs, nothing outstanding. How'd you fair on your end?"

"Much of the same, sir."

Before anything more could be shared, the team channel broke open with Lieutenant Marquis' calm voice.

"Paragon Heath, sir, I'm confirming that we've got possible hostiles inbound, approaching from the rooftops. Too early to get an estimate headcount but they are armed and have eyes on us. Please advise, over."

He had been expecting this and exercised composure for the benefit of his men. "Sit tight, Lieutenant. We'll be there momentarily."

The team reconvened outside by the gunship, which now had a fortified barricade propped up using the portable materials they had loaded in cargo. The paragon's helmet heads-up-display identified a border of motion detectors and a field of tagged mines ensconcing the perimeter of open sand. He was pleased. Swift work. Marquis never let him down.

"Report."

"Sir," she greeted on his stomping approach as the team fanned out around the barricades. "Raiders. All from one band, as far as I can tell. They're casing us out. I count four snipers posted on the taller structures. The rest seem to be carrying assault weapons. Nothing heavy so far."

Marquis handed off her sniper rifle and Heath propped it with ease against his mechsuit's shoulder guard. As reported, he could see through the scope as the raiders moved in along the maze of networks they had built for themselves across the rooftops of the ruins. They were clad in drab leathers and tattered rags, moth-eaten shirts and trousers, reinforced with makeshift scraps for armour in a colourful array of designs. With statement hair and grim facades, all sported some type of black smearing across their faces and skin, with tattoos and other theatrics abound. The gear appeared more so for intimidation factors rather than practical functionality.

Very much the rebels with a cause for murder and mayhem.

Nothing but heathen scum.

Paragon Heath lowered the rifle, an indignant twist to his lip hidden behind his visor. "Let them come. If they're at all smart, they'll stay out of our way. If they get nosy, then we'll gladly make an example of them and burn their bodies across the perimeter. This is our territory now, and before long, the entire city ruins will fall under the sigil of the Pantheon. By force, if the need arises."

Marquis was grinning wickedly when he passed her rifle back. In fact, his whole team was.

Phenomenal.


End file.
